Shortcuts and formatting of scripture index

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AElfwine Mischler

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Aug 28, 2025, 9:59:15 PMAug 28
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I’ve never actually done an index of Bible citations, but now I’ve got two projects needing one. I’ve never even seen such an index. I’m hoping that the publisher will be OK with an indented one.

What’s the best way to handle this in Sky 8? I’m thinking that using the Acronym Manager will be best, something along these lines, where curly brackets indicate hidden text:

gen ==> {001}Genesis
exod ==> {002}Exodus

How do you handle coding for something like 1 Kings and 2 Kings — especially since Sky only allows four characters in the acronym? Is the hidden text order coding enough, or do I also need to code the 1 and 2 to be ignored? (I don’t know what number these books are. Making up something for my example. < > enclose ignored text.)

okng ==> {021}<1 >Kings
tkng ==> {022}<2 >Kings

The finished product will look something like this, I hope (totally made-up verse numbers. [b] and [/b] enclose bold numbers.)

Old Testament
Genesis
[b]3:12[/b], 27
[b]6:45[/b], 18
Exodus
[b]7:18-21[/b], 158

New Testament
Mark
[b]5:12[/b], 36
[b]14:5-8[/b], 118

Is this more or less right? Perhaps the page numbers need to be right-aligned, but I’ve heard that it sometimes causes problems for the designers.

Are there other shortcuts I can use? Any pitfalls to avoid?

I realize that once I get the Acronym Manager set up for the current book, I can save it as a template for the second, upcoming book. I don’t know yet if they will use the same order of the biblical books, but that shouldn’t be too hard to edit/tweak in the later project.

Thanks, and happy indexing!


Ælfwine Mischler
Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
Business email: aelf...@MischlerEditorial.com
www.MischlerEditorial.com
American Society for Indexing (ASI)

Cheryl Lenser

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Aug 29, 2025, 7:10:27 AMAug 29
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Hi Ælfwine,

Congratulations on your new project! I'm one of those weird people who actually enjoys doing Scripture indexes, even though I haven't done a whole lot of them yet.

I use Translation Manager to set up the index. (Curly brackets indicate hidden text.)

Jdg --> {007}Judges
Ruth --> {008}Ruth
1Sam --> {009}1 Samuel
2Sam --> {010}2 Samuel

As you can see, I don't need to worry about hiding the 1 and 2 for 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel; they will be sorted correctly with just the hidden numerical order text.

The publisher I've done work for has a particular format they want for Scripture indexes, so I follow their instructions. It looks something like this (I hope it comes through okay):

Exodus
3:6                                                       197
6:6                                                       220
10:17                                                   235

In other words, yes, the page numbers are right-aligned. But your publisher might have different instructions for formatting.

I received my first Scripture index project shortly after watching your webinar about Acronym Manager and Translation Manager, so I have you to thank for being able to set all this up in the first place. 

Good luck on your project!
Cheryl

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Cheryl Lenser
Professional freelance indexer & editor
Treasurer, American Society for Indexing

From: skyind...@googlegroups.com <skyind...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of AElfwine Mischler <aelfwine...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2025 9:59 PM
To: SKYIndexUsers <SkyInd...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [SKYIndexUsers] Shortcuts and formatting of scripture index
 

American Society for Indexing (ASI)

AElfwine Mischler

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Aug 29, 2025, 9:54:08 PMAug 29
to Cheryl Lenser, SKYIndexUsers
Thanks, Gina, for your kind offer to share your Acronym file. And thanks, Cheryl, for your take. I didn't know that the Translation Manager could handle coding in the translation. (Just for the record, my webinar covered the Translation Manager and Character Map, but not the Acronym Manager.) I think I'll try Cheryl's way with the TM because there's not a tight limit on the number of characters entered, and the upcoming project will also have rabbinic writings (totally new to me) that I hope I can code. There's only so many 4-character acronyms I'd want to deal with.

I didn't mention that the author of the current project has also asked for a qur'anic references index, which shouldn't be too bad because there are not separate books in the Qur'an, just 114 surahs ("chapters"). He sent me a sample from a previous book (he actually sent the PDF of the whole book -- looks like interesting reading!) and I've been working on how to get Sky 8 to do this. I've attached a snippet of part of a page of the author's sample -- when I tried to insert it in the body of the email I kept getting an error message. I will handle the biblical references index for this book the same way.

Problem 1
The sample has (main) headings that sometimes include the whole surah, sometimes only select verses. For example, these (each followed by one or more locators):
1
1:1
1:3, 7
1:7

2
2:1–5
2:1–10

(a) Sky did not see the simple "1" and "2" as headings, but combined them with the locators. So the first one  came out as 167, 69–70 rather than 1  67, 69–70.
I tried entering these as 1{:0} and 2{:0}, with { } indicating hidden text, but it didn't work until I figured out how to handle the second problem.
(b) I want a blank line between all of surah 1, surah 2, surah 3, etc. Like an alphabetic separator, but I don't see how to do this except manually in the Word file.

Problem 2
The author wants the locators not right-aligned, but rather with a tab space between the surah and verse number and the first locator. Many of these have multiple locators, all of which appear as a hanging indent.
I tried using _=_ (space=space) as the leader, and then replacing _=_ with a tab character (^t) in Word, but it didn't work at first. When I searched for =_ instead of _=_, I got what I wanted. Then, also in Word, I changed the paragraph to hanging indent with a large tab (about 1.5 inches).

So Problem 1(a) is solved if I use hidden text for ":0"; include a space after the "=" for the leader; Find and Replace =_ with ^t in Word. 

As for Problem 1(b), I still haven't figured out how to get a blank line between surahs or books of the Bible in the indexes, but I guess it won't kill me to do it in Word at the end. If anyone has ideas, please let me know.
 
Thanks again to Gina, Cheryl, and Deborah (who answered off-list).

Happy indexing!


Ælfwine Mischler
mid-May through mid-September: time zone UTC -4

Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
American Society for Indexing (ASI)


Quran index sample.png

Deborah Patton

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Aug 30, 2025, 6:09:40 AMAug 30
to AElfwine Mischler, Cheryl Lenser, SKYIndexUsers
For this bit:
(b) I want a blank line between all of surah 1, surah 2, surah 3, etc. Like an alphabetic separator, but I don't see how to do this except manually in the Word file.
I wonder if if the 'Define alphabetic groups' table will help somehow. Options>Index Style>alphabetic groupings>Define alphabetic groups
It already has a numbers section but those are all on one line. What if they were on separate lines? (They don't have to be added in order). I'd maybe name the section with the number too instead of the word Numbers.
Like section name 01 and Member name 1
section name 02 and Member name 2
and so on
If they are split like that would they produce a blank line. Once you save that table you can make choices about blank lines before or after groupings.
Deborah

gina weightoftheword.com

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Sep 2, 2025, 1:00:34 AMSep 2
to SKYIndexUsers
Hi Ælfwine,

I do lots of Scripture indexes and I used to use an elaborate coding system I made up with hidden text. I've now transferred that into an Acronym list that will sort in biblical order. Once I've done all of the entry, I just highlight the subheading column and bold it all at once. 

I'm happy to share my Acronym Manager file with you, if you like. I've also printed out the list for my reference, but it printed in alpha order, rather than biblical order, so it takes some getting used to finding things if I don't remember how I labeled it, but it is mostly fairly intuitive.

Warmly,
Gina


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President, American Society for Indexing, 2022-2023
Officer ASI/Rocky Mountain Chapter, 2012-2016
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Member International Association of Culinary Professionals


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