Glossary of Terms Used in Index Marking and Generating

The following is a list of general terms used in the index menus. More detailed descriptions and instructions can be found in Using the Index: Mark Toolbar.

Heading: The term or phrase being indexed. Up to 3 levels of headings are provided: the main heading, a subheading, and a sub-subheading. For example, in an index entry that looks like this:

Philosophers,

Greek,

Athenian

Eleatic

"Philosophers" is the main heading, "Greek" is the subheading, and "Athenian" and "Eleatic" are the sub-subheading.

Alternate Sort/Sort Under Term: You can specify a different "sort under" string, to enable the sorting of a particular reference under some other term (for example, you may wish to enter years as numbers, as "2001," but sort them as though spelled out, or to sort items chronologically rather than alphabetically).

Heading Category and Subcategory: The kind, or type of item of the heading term. The heading category can be a name, place, subject term, or the first line of a poem or the title of a song, etc. Four predefined categories are available: Persons, Places, Topics, and a General category. Categories are most useful for generating unique thematic indexes.

Reference Type: The kind of reference for the current page entry, or "locator." Some examples of reference types are Figures, Tables, Definition, or other custom types. Specifying a reference type may be useful if you want the page numbers of instances of particular types of terms to be listed in a particular print style (bold, italic, etc.) for headings in the index.

Type of Index Entry: The way that the words and phrases in the file are listed in the index. The index entry can be the word as it is found in the document, a string of words, or words manually typed by the user.