How many times have you used the index function in your word processor only to find that every single time you use a word in your book dose it appears in your index? Which is exactly what you do not want.
Oh sure, you want the word to appear when you use it in headings, subheadings, on in text where it’s important, but certainly not everywhere it appears.
This technique allows you to choose which instance of any word will appear in the index
This technique allows you to choose which instance of any word will appear in the index of your document
How?
By using the Extended ASCII Decimal Code 255*
You never heard of ASCII Decimal Code 255 have you? We are not surprised because they have fallen out of favor with today’s computers. Unless, of course, you a computer professional. In short, these codes are computer speak for every letter and number you type. More that the non printing codes support printers and other peripherals.
Here’s How To Make This Work For You:
- Lets say you want the word ‘Dog’ (without the single quotation marks) on page 15 of your book, paper, thesis, or other document to appear in the index, but you do not want the word ‘Dog’ appearing in the index on pages 16, 17, and 18.
- On page 15 you type the word – Dog then without skipping a space you:
- Hold down the Alt key and on your numeric keypad (while holding down the Alt
key) type 255 - Then release the Alt key and you’ll see what looks like a space appear after the word Dog. But it’s not the space character in’s ASKII255, BUT it looks just like the space character.
See what you’ve done? When you add Dog[ASCII255] to your index, it (the index) will only find instances of Dog[ASCII255] because you added DogASKII255 to the index.
Why This Works
To us humans, the word dog is composed of three letters. To a computer that’s not the case. What this technique does is append a character that looks for all the world like a space, but it is not the space character. So, what this does is make the word dog a four letter word ending in ASKII255.
When your indexing software goes looking for what to index, if finds only the word(s) dogASKII255 because that’s what you told the index to look for. QED.
* ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Want to learn more about ASKII? http://www.asciitable.com.