Index

Add an index with Insert → Index in the chapter list. Opening it gives you the index management page.

This is the general, topical index, and its entries are the ones you choose. A book can have more than one index — see More than one index below. Scripture references are handled separately and automatically — see Scripture Index.

Across the top is a row of tabs: a + tab for adding entries, and then one tab per initial letter once you have entries, plus a % tab for anything that does not start with a letter. The letter tabs are how you review a large index without scrolling through all of it.

Building an index with AI

If the book has no entries yet, the page offers Build index using AI.

There are options for whether to index front matter, back matter and footnotes. Reading a whole book takes a while, so the build runs in the agent panel where you can watch it and stop it at any point; see AI Tools.

Adding entries by hand

The + tab has an Add Index Entry box. Type a word or phrase and Inkwell searches the book for it. An apostrophe or quotation mark in a term matches either the straight or the curly form, so O'Brien finds O’Brien in the text and you need not worry which one the prose has.

What you do with the matches is then up to you: Create new index entry files them all under that phrase, Create new index subentry puts them under a subheading of an entry you already have, and Merge into existing entry adds them to one. Nothing is indexed until you choose.

Add Multiple Entries takes a list — one entry per line — and adds them all at once, which is much faster than typing them one at a time when you are working from a prepared list.

Working with an entry

An entry is one line with two buttons on the right:

• Show Entries — every place in the book the entry occurs.
• Show Actions — everything you can do to the entry.

They are alternatives: opening one closes the other, so neither list ever buries the other and the entry you are working on stays in view.

Where it occurs

Show Entries lists the chapters the entry appears in, and opening a chapter lists the occurrences inside it, each with a checkbox. Clear a checkbox to drop that occurrence from this entry — this is how you deal with a word that appears in passing in places that are not worth indexing. If the same phrase is also indexed under another entry, that one stays.

A long list runs off the bottom of the screen, so there is a second Hide Entries button at the foot of it as well as the one in the entry's own row. Either one closes the list and leaves the entry where you can see it.

What you can do to it

Modify index entry holds the entry's name — change it and every occurrence follows — along with Toggle Italics , for titles and terms that should be set in italics in the printed index, and a Note field for a cross-reference such as see also.

Move to new index subentry files everything the entry holds under a subheading of another entry, so one entry can be broken down by topic. Merge into another entry and Split off occurrences are below. Remove index entry takes it off the whole book.

More than one entry on the same phrase

A phrase can belong to more than one entry. Adding "Philosophers, Greek" to a passage already indexed under "Socrates" adds a second entry rather than replacing the first, and the passage turns up under both in the printed index. Entries on one phrase have to differ, though — adding an entry that is already there changes nothing.

When the cursor is inside a phrase carrying several entries, the index toolbar shows an Entry and Subentry row for each one, so you can edit them separately.

Merging entries

Merge into another entry moves everything an entry holds onto an entry you pick. Useful for singular and plural forms, or different spellings of the same name, that should share a single index entry.

Splitting an entry

The opposite job: one entry has collected passages that belong under two different headings — "hell" filed in among "judgment", say. Split off occurrences divides it.

It lists the entry's occurrences with the sentence around each one, and you tick the ones to move. Name the entry they should move to — an existing one or a new one — and press Split. Everything you did not tick stays where it is.

Reading the passage is the point: a word on its own rarely tells you which occurrences belong together, and the ones you want to move often say exactly the same thing as the ones you do not.

Starting over

Clear Index, on the + tab, removes every entry — the way to begin again after an AI build that did not suit you.

More than one index

Some books print a separate Index of Names beside the general index, or an Index of Places. Once the book has an index, Insert → Additional Index… in the chapter list adds another. Give it a name, such as Index of Names; that name becomes the section's title.

Each index has its own entry in the chapter list, and clicking one opens that index's page. Everything on the page — adding entries, the letter tabs, Build index using AI, Clear Index — works on that index alone. Each index also has its own title, columns and other section settings.

The indexes are independent. A passage can be in two of them at once: Augustine in the Index of Names and in the general index under grace. The same name can also be an entry in both, and each index keeps its own page numbers, italics and notes for it.

An entry filed in the wrong index can be moved with Move to another index in its actions. Every occurrence goes with it, along with its subentries, italics and note.

Removing an index from the chapter list keeps its entries. It then appears in the Insert menu under its own name, and inserting it there brings it back as it was.

Index entries in the text

Index markers can be shown or hidden in the editor with Tools → Index Entries. You can also mark a specific piece of text as an index entry directly with the Index Entry button on the toolbar, rather than matching on a word throughout the book.

Pressing that button on a phrase that is already indexed clears every entry from it. To remove just one of several, use that entry's occurrence checkbox on the index page.

The Entry and Subentry boxes that appear suggest the entries already in the book as you type, so a passage lands under the entry you meant rather than a near-miss spelling of it. They are not a closed list, though — type something new and it becomes a new entry. Left empty, Entry files the passage under the marked words themselves, which is what the box's grey text is showing you.

In a book with more than one index, an Index box comes first and says which index the passage is filed in. A new mark goes into the general index. Choose another index from the box and the Entry suggestions switch to that index's entries.