Silk purse or sow’s ear? A case study of an indexer-supplied list of terms used by a publisher to produce an index

Professional book indexers have traditionally worked from final proofs, adding the page numbers to the index as they work. More recently, for some projects, indexers have been embedding index terms into the document at an earlier stage. In this case study, an indexer reports on a project in which she was asked to supply a list of terms earlier in the process. The publisher advised that they would add the page numbers to the list of index terms once proofs were available. Despite some reluctance and to satisfy her curiosity, the indexer took on this job and reports here that it did not turn out well.