Almost all books come with indexes in the back. These sections identify the most frequently-used words in the book, and list the pages those words appear on. Authors (generally) do not create these ...

It’s hard to believe, but the humble index—expediter of searches, organizer of concepts— prompted outcries as it became more widespread: If one has an index, why would anyone read a book? Alarms “were ...

Readers have collected their favorite literary lines for centuries. Now compiling a portable word scrapbook is easier than ever. By J. D. Biersdorfer Creating a commonplace book is somewhat like ...