Index (publishing)

Imagine you have a big book with lots of pages and lots of different things to talk about inside, like a dictionary or an encyclopedia. The index is like the table of contents at the beginning, but it's at the back of the book and it lists all the important words or topics that people might want to look up.

For example, if you wanted to find information about dogs, you could look in the index, find the page numbers that have the word "dogs" on them, and then flip to those pages to read more. The index helps you find exactly what you're looking for faster and easier, without having to read through the entire book.

Publishers put indexes in their books to help readers find the information they need quickly and also to make the book more organized and user-friendly. An index is typically made up of a list of words, phrases, or topics, in alphabetical order, with corresponding page numbers that indicate where to find them in the book.