For books and other printed publications we do the following:-

• assess your requirements

• analyse the text

• mark-up the chapters with potential index entries

• input the terms into a specialist indexing program

• edit the draft index

• implement the style requirements

• spell-check and verify the cross-references

• quality check the index

• submit the index in the required format e.g. .rtf, .tab, .xls, .doc files

The short answer is ‘no’!

Automated indexing programs can produce a list of words used in the text (a concordance), but this is only a word list with limited structure - it does not include concepts implied in the text, nor does it link related terms, nor differentiate between homographs (words spelt the same but with different meanings), nor include synonyms (words spelt differently but with the same meaning), nor distinguish trivial from significant references.

A professional indexer understands and organises the information in a way that computers simply cannot, but will harness the benefits of computers for the sorting, editing and formatting the index.

So our indexing combines the most up-to-date technology with specialist knowledge and human expertise. A winning combination!