Concordance and cross-referencing index

[Guest]

I'm using a very large concordance table to create a common index for
multiple documents (chapters in a book). I want to do some extensive
cross-referencing (e.g., Horse: see also Mammals). I thought I could do this
right in the concordance table, so that when it marks the documents with the
XE fields, it would automatically add the \t switch too. So I went ahead and
put the text part of the switch into the concordance. Now I'm at the stage of
needing to create the actual switch in the documents, but I can't see a way
to do this using the concordance table.

Is this kind of cross-referencing something that can only be done manually??
Please said it isn't so! :-( I can't just leave it as text that is a
sub-category because it wants to put in page numbers, which I don't want for
the cross-referencing. I can't seem to find anything in a web search
specifically about using the two together (concordance and \t).

Your help is most appreciated.

Jo

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jo:

Hell, it's more than ten years since I last discovered that a Concordance
file is a very bad idea and gave up on them I ALWAYS manually tag
indexes because a Concordance usually gives you a whole lot of irrelevant
entries that take longer to fix than manually tagging does.

However, if I remember properly (and I don't have time to test this for you
tonight: it's bed-time where I live) you have to add the entire XE entry
string to the second column.

Study the help topic "Field codes: XE (Index Entry) field"

I think what you need is:

{ XE "Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" }


So your concordance entry would be:

Highlighting in column 1

"Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" in column 2


Note that BOTH text strings must have quotes where there's more than one.
You may have to enclose the entire entry string in outer quotes, I can't
remember.

Try this: hope it works for you.

Cheers

I'm using a very large concordance table to create a common index for
multiple documents (chapters in a book). I want to do some extensive
cross-referencing (e.g., Horse: see also Mammals). I thought I could do this
right in the concordance table, so that when it marks the documents with the
XE fields, it would automatically add the \t switch too. So I went ahead and
put the text part of the switch into the concordance. Now I'm at the stage of
needing to create the actual switch in the documents, but I can't see a way
to do this using the concordance table.

Is this kind of cross-referencing something that can only be done manually??
Please said it isn't so! :-( I can't just leave it as text that is a
sub-category because it wants to put in page numbers, which I don't want for
the cross-referencing. I can't seem to find anything in a web search
specifically about using the two together (concordance and \t).

Your help is most appreciated.

Jo

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Guest]

Thank you John! I'll try it and see what happens. I know it's often advised
to do the tagging manually, but with a 400+ page book that spans a very wide
range of subjects, I felt it would be easier for me to keep track of it all
if I used a concordance table. And yes, I see what you're getting at about
the extra entries, which definitely is a pain. I'm winding up doing a
combination of manual and concordance, but I'd like to minimize the manual
stuff if I can.

I'll let you know how I make out.

Jo

Hi Jo:

Hell, it's more than ten years since I last discovered that a Concordance
file is a very bad idea and gave up on them I ALWAYS manually tag
indexes because a Concordance usually gives you a whole lot of irrelevant
entries that take longer to fix than manually tagging does.

However, if I remember properly (and I don't have time to test this for you
tonight: it's bed-time where I live) you have to add the entire XE entry
string to the second column.

Study the help topic "Field codes: XE (Index Entry) field"

I think what you need is:

{ XE "Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" }


So your concordance entry would be:

Highlighting in column 1

"Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" in column 2


Note that BOTH text strings must have quotes where there's more than one.
You may have to enclose the entire entry string in outer quotes, I can't
remember.

Try this: hope it works for you.

Cheers

I'm using a very large concordance table to create a common index for
multiple documents (chapters in a book). I want to do some extensive
cross-referencing (e.g., Horse: see also Mammals). I thought I could do this
right in the concordance table, so that when it marks the documents with the
XE fields, it would automatically add the \t switch too. So I went ahead and
put the text part of the switch into the concordance. Now I'm at the stage of
needing to create the actual switch in the documents, but I can't see a way
to do this using the concordance table.

Is this kind of cross-referencing something that can only be done manually??
Please said it isn't so! :-( I can't just leave it as text that is a
sub-category because it wants to put in page numbers, which I don't want for
the cross-referencing. I can't seem to find anything in a web search
specifically about using the two together (concordance and \t).

Your help is most appreciated.

Jo

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Guest]

Hi again,

Okay, it sort of does it. It does put in the "Highlighting. See Selecting"
without adding page numbers. BUT: (a) it puts one phrase in for EVERY entry
it finds ("Highlighting. See Selecting See Selecting See Selecting"), and (b)
it doesn't do the italics on "see" whereas it does put the whole reference in
Times New Roman. (I'm using a different font.) The index format I'm using
should put "see" in italics Times New Roman and leave the rest alone.

I may have to do this manually after all (sigh...) but if anyone has any
other suggestions about how to get this to behave properly, I would really
appreciate it! Thanks.

Jo

Hi Jo:

Hell, it's more than ten years since I last discovered that a Concordance
file is a very bad idea and gave up on them I ALWAYS manually tag
indexes because a Concordance usually gives you a whole lot of irrelevant
entries that take longer to fix than manually tagging does.

However, if I remember properly (and I don't have time to test this for you
tonight: it's bed-time where I live) you have to add the entire XE entry
string to the second column.

Study the help topic "Field codes: XE (Index Entry) field"

I think what you need is:

{ XE "Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" }


So your concordance entry would be:

Highlighting in column 1

"Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" in column 2


Note that BOTH text strings must have quotes where there's more than one.
You may have to enclose the entire entry string in outer quotes, I can't
remember.

Try this: hope it works for you.

Cheers

I'm using a very large concordance table to create a common index for
multiple documents (chapters in a book). I want to do some extensive
cross-referencing (e.g., Horse: see also Mammals). I thought I could do this
right in the concordance table, so that when it marks the documents with the
XE fields, it would automatically add the \t switch too. So I went ahead and
put the text part of the switch into the concordance. Now I'm at the stage of
needing to create the actual switch in the documents, but I can't see a way
to do this using the concordance table.

Is this kind of cross-referencing something that can only be done manually??
Please said it isn't so! :-( I can't just leave it as text that is a
sub-category because it wants to put in page numbers, which I don't want for
the cross-referencing. I can't seem to find anything in a web search
specifically about using the two together (concordance and \t).

Your help is most appreciated.

Jo

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jo:

Okay, it sort of does it. It does put in the "Highlighting. See Selecting"
without adding page numbers. BUT: (a) it puts one phrase in for EVERY entry
it finds ("Highlighting. See Selecting See Selecting See Selecting"),

Now you know why nobody uses Concordances... You can run a concordance only
ONCE. If you need to re-run it, you must find/replace all the XE tags out
of the text and start again each time.

and (b)
it doesn't do the italics on "see" whereas it does put the whole reference in
Times New Roman. (I'm using a different font.) The index format I'm using
should put "see" in italics Times New Roman and leave the rest alone.

You can fix that with a global Find/Replace later...

I may have to do this manually after all (sigh...) but if anyone has any
other suggestions about how to get this to behave properly, I would really
appreciate it! Thanks.

Nope. Tag the damn thing manually. 400 pages is a tiny book compared to
the 35,000-page productions I am used to. If you know what you're doing,
you can tag 400 pages manually in a couple of days... It will take you
something like ten days to sort out the concordance (and it will never work
properly).

The Concordance mechanism is very powerful and extremely useful. Just: not
for making Indexes. I use them all the time to insert things such as
hyperlinks into large volumes.

But they're useless for indexes because of the fundamental problem:
"Setting the colour" may appear on nearly every page. But the explanation
of HOW to set the colour appears only one place in the book. It's that one
place you want in the Index. And the concordance file can't tell the
difference. It is almost NEVER the case that you would want the index to
contain a reference for EVERY occurrence of a term. Such an index drives
readers MAD.

Cheers

Jo

Hi Jo:

Hell, it's more than ten years since I last discovered that a Concordance
file is a very bad idea and gave up on them I ALWAYS manually tag
indexes because a Concordance usually gives you a whole lot of irrelevant
entries that take longer to fix than manually tagging does.

However, if I remember properly (and I don't have time to test this for you
tonight: it's bed-time where I live) you have to add the entire XE entry
string to the second column.

Study the help topic "Field codes: XE (Index Entry) field"

I think what you need is:

{ XE "Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" }


So your concordance entry would be:

Highlighting in column 1

"Highlighting" \t "See Selecting" in column 2


Note that BOTH text strings must have quotes where there's more than one.
You may have to enclose the entire entry string in outer quotes, I can't
remember.

Try this: hope it works for you.

Cheers

I'm using a very large concordance table to create a common index for
multiple documents (chapters in a book). I want to do some extensive
cross-referencing (e.g., Horse: see also Mammals). I thought I could do this
right in the concordance table, so that when it marks the documents with the
XE fields, it would automatically add the \t switch too. So I went ahead and
put the text part of the switch into the concordance. Now I'm at the stage
of
needing to create the actual switch in the documents, but I can't see a way
to do this using the concordance table.

Is this kind of cross-referencing something that can only be done manually??
Please said it isn't so! :-( I can't just leave it as text that is a
sub-category because it wants to put in page numbers, which I don't want for
the cross-referencing. I can't seem to find anything in a web search
specifically about using the two together (concordance and \t).

Your help is most appreciated.

Jo

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Guest]

Now you know why nobody uses Concordances... You can run a concordance only
ONCE. If you need to re-run it, you must find/replace all the XE tags out
of the text and start again each time.

Oh, that's what macros are for! ;-)

Sub PurgeRDFields()
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^d"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.MoveUp unit:=wdScreen, Count:=2
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^d"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

I've got it assigned to Ctrl-Shift-P. Just make sure View--Show All is on
when you run it. Very handy.

You can fix that with a global Find/Replace later...
True.

If you know what you're doing,
you can tag 400 pages manually in a couple of days... It will take you
something like ten days to sort out the concordance (and it will never work
properly).

I still like the concordance because it helps me organise my thoughts about
what should and shouldn't be in the index and what category-like words they
should be cross-listed with (e.g., finding "list" under both "nouns" and
"verbs").

So what I'm arriving at is a combination of methods. I'm using the
concordance to catch the lion's share of stuff, using unique or specific
phrases in the document whenever possible (to avoid 6000 page entries). Then
I have a list of one-time-only listings that appear 6000 times, which I'll do
manually.

And I'm playing with the idea of having a separate document that forces the
cross-referencing and I can have it appear only once (since I don't need to
have it reference any page numbers, only a word or phrase). Since I'm
bringing it all into a separate document using RD fields, I *think* I should
be able to set up the cross-referencing in a separate document that I
incorporate as if it was just another chapter in the list. (crossing fingers)

I'll post how I make out on that. Thanks very much for your help John!

Jo

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jo:

Oh, that's what macros are for! ;-)

Yup!

I still like the concordance because it helps me organise my thoughts about
what should and shouldn't be in the index and what category-like words they
should be cross-listed with (e.g., finding "list" under both "nouns" and
"verbs").

It's called an "Editor's Word-list" Just don't make it into a
Concordance...

Try this: Go to the Window menu and open a new Window into the same
document. Scroll down so you can see the index. Arrange the windows side
by side.

Now Work through the document tagging manually in the left window. To see
where that term lands, simply regenerate the index, see where it is, and
change the tag if necessary. Then move on to the next bit. Keep the text
you're working on in one window, the growing index in the other. You'll be
done in no time.

So what I'm arriving at is a combination of methods. I'm using the
concordance to catch the lion's share of stuff, using unique or specific
phrases in the document whenever possible (to avoid 6000 page entries). Then
I have a list of one-time-only listings that appear 6000 times, which I'll do
manually.

You're doing it the hard way! You would have had a 400-page manual tagged
by now if you had gotten rid of that concordance

And I'm playing with the idea of having a separate document that forces the
cross-referencing and I can have it appear only once (since I don't need to
have it reference any page numbers, only a word or phrase). Since I'm
bringing it all into a separate document using RD fields, I *think* I should
be able to set up the cross-referencing in a separate document that I
incorporate as if it was just another chapter in the list. (crossing fingers)

Yes, this is a great idea, and will work just fine since you don't need page
numbers in "See" and "See also" references

I'll post how I make out on that. Thanks very much for your help John!

You're welcome! Finished yet??

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Guest]

Hey John,

Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, or at least to concede that
some techniques work better for some people than others. Yes, I finished the
job. Yes, I used a concordance. Yes, it worked better for me on this
particular job than doing it all manually, and I'll tell you why.

It helped me get a better sense of what was there and the overall patterns
of various words and phrases, which I wouldn't have been able to see as
easily if I'd done it all manually.

I even wound up doing the "manual" tagging in the table too, by selecting
unique phrases in the target paragraph. Yes, I'm sure you'll say that was the
long way around ;-) but for me it allowed me to see what the different
instances were about and to amalgamate some of them into sub-categories. It
would have been harder for me to keep track of it all if I'd done it all
manually. This way, the concordance became my "mission control" and I could
see what was doing what. ;-)

*shrug* It worked well for me. I guess everyone has a different way that
works best for them. I do appreciate your help, knowledge and suggestions
though. Although I didn't do it entirely your way in the end, it helped me
understand better what I was doing. So thanks much!

Jo

P.S. - Didn't Word used to have a feature that would count the number of
occurrences of every word in the document? Or am I thinking of that "other
Wordp..." word processor?

Hi Jo:

Oh, that's what macros are for! ;-)

Yup!

I still like the concordance because it helps me organise my thoughts about
what should and shouldn't be in the index and what category-like words they
should be cross-listed with (e.g., finding "list" under both "nouns" and
"verbs").

It's called an "Editor's Word-list" Just don't make it into a
Concordance...

Try this: Go to the Window menu and open a new Window into the same
document. Scroll down so you can see the index. Arrange the windows side
by side.

Now Work through the document tagging manually in the left window. To see
where that term lands, simply regenerate the index, see where it is, and
change the tag if necessary. Then move on to the next bit. Keep the text
you're working on in one window, the growing index in the other. You'll be
done in no time.

So what I'm arriving at is a combination of methods. I'm using the
concordance to catch the lion's share of stuff, using unique or specific
phrases in the document whenever possible (to avoid 6000 page entries). Then
I have a list of one-time-only listings that appear 6000 times, which I'll do
manually.

You're doing it the hard way! You would have had a 400-page manual tagged
by now if you had gotten rid of that concordance

And I'm playing with the idea of having a separate document that forces the
cross-referencing and I can have it appear only once (since I don't need to
have it reference any page numbers, only a word or phrase). Since I'm
bringing it all into a separate document using RD fields, I *think* I should
be able to set up the cross-referencing in a separate document that I
incorporate as if it was just another chapter in the list. (crossing fingers)

Yes, this is a great idea, and will work just fine since you don't need page
numbers in "See" and "See also" references

I'll post how I make out on that. Thanks very much for your help John!

You're welcome! Finished yet??

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jo:

Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree,
{Shrug}

P.S. - Didn't Word used to have a feature that would count the number of
occurrences of every word in the document? Or am I thinking of that "other
Wordp..." word processor?

WordPerfect had that feature, using its "Add all words to the dictionary"
utility which Word doesn't have.

You can achieve the same effect in Word, but it's a lot more work. To count
"one" word, search/replace it with itself. To get a distribution of "many":

1) Save the document as plain text

2) Search replace every space into a paragraph mark

3) Throw the long single column into Excel

Use the Pivot Table function to give you a report of how many occurrences
there are of each word in the document.

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410