Post B89ocPpHrarqLgBV5c by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
(DIR) More posts by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
(DIR) Post #B89oaXNGpRX1BCBUJc by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Thread on indexes and indexing.(starting with reposts)Never Index Your Own Book(Kurt Vonnegut Cat's Cradle, ch 55)"It appeared that Claire Minton, in her time, had been a professional indexer. I had never heard of such a profession before.She told me that she had put her husband through college years before with her earnings as an indexer, that the earnings had been good, and that few people could index well.She said that indexing was a thing that only the most amateurish author undertook to do for his own book. I asked her what she thought of Philip Castle’s job.“Flattering to the author, insulting to the reader,” she said. “In a hyphenated word,” she observed, with the shrewd amiability of an expert, “ ‘self-indulgent.’ I’m always embarrassed when I see an index an author has made of his own work.”“Embarrassed?”“It’s a revealing thing, an author’s index of his own work,” she informed me. “It’s a shameless exhibition—to the trained eye.”“She can read character from an index,” said her husband.“Oh?” I said. “What can you tell about Philip Castle?”She smiled faintly. “Things I’d better not tell strangers.”https://catscradle.neocities.org/chapter-55.html#indexes
(DIR) Post #B89oaXuEqru2pRbohc by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Infinite loop.#Indexeshttps://x.com/hull_libraries/status/1481215927718928384
(DIR) Post #B89oaYXaUZNWnU1F2G by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"For twenty years, Alejandro Cesarco has been making fake book indexes: alphabetical lists that look authentic enough, down to their page numbers and layout, but are actually free-floating artefacts." #fforfake #indexes https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/december/his-back-pages
(DIR) Post #B89oaZ5cS2bIV1wQ52 by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Infinite loop, II.https://xcancel.com/rpg7twit/status/1481353802141913090
(DIR) Post #B89oaZgqDeNIMTM968 by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"Christ showing wounds, and Virgin her breast to intercede, 477"(Source lost to linkrot but found again by @misty ! https://web.archive.org/web/20160323192919/http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/digitalscriptorium/huntington/index6.html )https://xcancel.com/temptoetiam/status/711302566785765378
(DIR) Post #B89oaaLFnOhWNoGQ5Y by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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From the index of an obstetrics textbook indexed by the wife of one of the authors (!).#indexeshttps://howardisms.com/other-stuff/williams-obstetrics-and-male-chauvinism/
(DIR) Post #B89oaazJOSkAO30PWi by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Index entries from A. Lapthorn Smith’s "How to Be Useful and Happy From Sixty to Ninety", 1922:"Absurdity of voluntary retirement at sixty(...)Alcohol as cure for insomnia, very bad(...)Beard, long white, don’t wear"https://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/07/19/in-a-word-479/ #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89oabfUrcUIUsk6HQ by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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From the index for Desmond Ryan’s 1967 book "The Fenian Chief: A Biography of James Stephens".#indexeshttps://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/11/06/comment-5/
(DIR) Post #B89oaeQib1Rt3uqqA4 by TallSimon@mstdn.ca
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@temptoetiam "Any idiot can write a book. It takes a genius to write an index."-- My mother's university history prof."I am never forget the day my first book is published.Every chapter I steal from somewhere else.Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory."-- Tom Lehrer's song "Lobachevsky" (whose reputation has since been restored)
(DIR) Post #B89ocFEPFrQNUOquDQ by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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https://mstdn.ca/@TallSimon/115877906294045573RT: https://mstdn.ca/users/TallSimon/statuses/115877906294045573
(DIR) Post #B89ocFr2wCKhQEvlRY by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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“The index for Hugh Vickers’ 1985 book Great Operatic Disasters contains an entry for which no page numbers are given:Incompetence — better not specified”https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/01/09/diplomacy-3/Thanks, @troublewithwords !
(DIR) Post #B89ocGQqn4yNDHgMFc by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Locke's indexing method for notebooks.(Honestly? It hurts my brain just thinking about it.)https://www.futilitycloset.com/2021/02/02/lockes-index/ #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocGzEjETivvloqe by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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“If you don’t find it in the Index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue.”— Consumer’s Guide, Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1897
(DIR) Post #B89ocHYKckYEgmBqYC by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"No one knows who compiled the index for George Mivart’s 1889 book The Origin of Human Reason, but apparently he had strong opinions. On page 136 Mivart describes a certain cockatoo that seemed to reply articulately to questions. The indexer made these [15] entries:"(click through to read, it's well worth it)https://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/10/01/reference-work/As for the cockatoo tale:"But we reach the climax of absurdity in a tale which is gravely quoted from a correspondent by Mr. Romanes as evidence of exceptional capacity on the part of a talking bird. It concerns a cockatoo which had been ill, and the words are :—" A friend came the same afternoon, and asked him how he was. With his head on one side and one of his cunning looks, he told her that he was * a little better ; ' and when she asked him if he had not been very ill, he said, 'Cockie better; Cockie ever so much better.' . . . When I came back (after a prolonged absence) he said, ' Mother come back to little Cockie : mother come back to little Cockie. Come and love me, and give me pretty kiss. Nobody pity poor Cockie. The boy beat poor Cockie.' He always told me if Jes scolded or beat him. He always told me as soon as he saw me, and in such a pitiful tone."After this we feel with Mr. Romanes that " enough has now been said." For if what he represents as facts and valid inferences were truly such, we should not say with our author that " animals present the germ of the sign-making faculty," but that animals plainly tyave and exercise the very same intellectual powers that we possess and exercise, and that nothing but a series of accidents can have prevented some bird, such as this Cockie, from having discovered the law of gravitation or dictated a treatise like the ethics of Aristotle !Mr. Romanes concludes the chapter we are examining as follows : " It is certain that .... no distinction between the brute and the man can be raised on the question of the kind of signs which they severally employ as natural or conventional. This distinction, therefore, may in future be disregarded, and natural and conventional signs, if made intentionally as signs, I shall consider as identical"https://archive.org/details/a593125200mivauoft/page/136/mode/2up #animhist #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocIAGLitOaPw8fo by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Indexed famous last words.Quite a bit of cursing.https://www.futilitycloset.com/2023/09/11/exeunt-3/ #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocIlq60wySxW9FA by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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« Keith Waterhouse asked, “Should not the Society of Indexers be known as Indexers, Society of, The?”»https://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/08/19/boomerang-3/#indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocJNPqJ0YLV69oW by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"Adam, his internal fluids, 18"(do click through!)https://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/04/30/he-suddenly-dropt-dead-of-heart-disease/
(DIR) Post #B89ocJzhXxdIGF0jUO by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"Critics, see Experts.Experts, see Critics.Giraffe, see Berlioz.Hedgehog, see Brahms."https://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/12/13/elsewhere-2/#animhist #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocKdl91fwGTkivY by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"Alligator, a decent one conjectured to be, in some sort, humane, 156"Also : Crocodiles, the logic of, and horizontal rain.https://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/10/11/memorable-indexes/
(DIR) Post #B89ocLEGxGsm5ipsq8 by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"Worms, earth, no inconsiderable link in the chain of nature, some account of"https://www.futilitycloset.com/2022/06/15/back-matter/
(DIR) Post #B89ocLnipTErrfQC5w by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Recommended books on indexes 1/nhttps://archive.org/details/indexersindexesi0000unse/mode/2up
(DIR) Post #B89ocMLkmwSdZDLN8i by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Recommended books on indexes 2/nIndex, A History of the, by Dennis Duncan.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index,_A_History_of_thehttps://www.penguin.co.uk/books/311987/index-a-history-of-the-by-duncan-dennis/9780141989662
(DIR) Post #B89ocMwGbBfTOSQX3I by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Index of last lines of poems.#indexeshttps://www.futilitycloset.com/2021/10/23/excerpts/
(DIR) Post #B89ocNc65f81UBzwFk by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"An index is customarily regarded as an arrangement of signposts pointing the way to alphabetically analysed textual content, but may effectively serve more imaginative purposes: to relieve the text of overburdening detail, to replace footnotes, to sharpen the perspective of the text, to supplement as well as elucidate textual content. Above all, it may be made so readable that one may begin with the index, deriving from it such pleasure as will stimulate eagerness to turn back to the text, perhaps piecemeal rather than as a continuous whole. (...) In summing up my ideas with regard to the unconventional Index, I would say that I can imagine that a mechanized, computerized Index may have its function, and that is to satisfy the mechanized, computerized human minds and their particular, totally legitimate intellectual needs. The type of Index I have in mind should be more than the carefully tended cemetery of the ideas expressed in the to-be-indexed text. (...) Ideally, then, a good Index should be more than merely a taciturn sign-post erected after all the rest has been done and is immutably crystallized. Otherwise we get the ordinary Feld-Wald- und Wiesen-Index which tells the reader how many kilometres he has to proceed in which direction, and at which locality he will receive further information, with the usual infras and supras, the ridiculous op.cits, the obscure qua voces, and the tantalizing see alsos. I prefer the Index which has a life of its own, which may pride itself on being the child of imagination, and which should enable us to spend a peaceful evening in bed, reading such an Index, as if we were reading a good novel."William S. Heckscher, The unconventional index and its merits, The Indexer: The International Journal of IndexingVolume 13, Number 1https://doi.org/10.3828/indexer.1982.13.1.3https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/indexer.1982.13.1.3 #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocOF5kgJvR8F528 by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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This leads me to the discovery of the scholarly journal The Indexer, still going strong since the 1950s and asking pointed questions.https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/index.2025.33https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/index.2025.35 #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89ocPpHrarqLgBV5c by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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“A plain, unlettered man is led to suspect that the writer of the volume and the writer of the index are playing at cross purposes"https://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/08/03/carpers-index/
(DIR) Post #B89oe5gLjJVsS4npb6 by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"coffins, walking, 80-1combustible persons, 14, 165junk, enchantment of, 49-50scissored women, 163-4snuff, composed of dead bodies, 80"https://www.futilitycloset.com/2025/01/15/range/
(DIR) Post #B89oe6HDWF0IIQ3H3w by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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In 1951 G.V. Carey published a 15-page booklet called “Making an Index,” intended to guide new authors in preparing indexes for their books. When it was published, a friendly (.) suggested jokingly that the booklet might have benefited from an index of its own, in which Carey could have given “a full-dress demonstration of his principles.”So, charmingly, Carey made one."https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/11/17/as-you-wish/#indexes
(DIR) Post #B89oe6iVskq1f4p4bo by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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A little excursus on footnotes:"except for footnotes, all the pages in Suburbia are blank."(Il s'agit d'une expérimentation oulipienne de Paul Fournel https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Biblioth%C3%A8que_oulipienne#Volume_III )https://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/12/03/light-reading-2/
(DIR) Post #B89oe7OLNEIZkoOToG by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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"see Pulping, p. 187."https://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/07/22/all-right-then/ #indexes
(DIR) Post #B89oe7wjJNnvTSTwPI by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Never piss off an indexer :phttps://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/06/27/summing-up-7/
(DIR) Post #B89oe8PRaclyuVusAC by temptoetiam@eldritch.cafe
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Index lacrymal (non, pas un doigt dans l'œil)https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/07/02/sob-story/