Index (typography)

An index in typography is like a special list of words that helps you find important topics in a book. Imagine that you are reading a big book with lots of interesting things inside, but you don't want to read the whole book to find one thing you want to know about. That's where the index comes in handy!

The people who make books create an index by going through the entire book and writing down the important words on a special page at the back of the book. They organize these words in alphabetical order, which means they put them in order according to the first letter of each word. So the word "apple" comes before the word "banana," because "a" comes before "b" in the alphabet.

Each word in the index also has a page number next to it, so when you look up a word in the index, you can quickly flip to the right page in the book to find more information about that word. For example, if you wanted to know about "oceans," you could look up that word in the index, and it might say "oceans, 15-17." That means you can find information about oceans on pages 15, 16, and 17 of the book.

In typography, the index is usually designed to stand out from the rest of the pages of the book by using a different font or style. This makes it easy for readers to find the index quickly and use it to find the information they need. Some books even have more than one index, such as an index of names and an index of topics, to make it even easier for readers to navigate the book.