Last week the silent service got an unexpected fifteen minutes of fame without doing a thing. The thing was of course the Sarah Palin memoir, Going Rogue, published without an index by HarperCollins.  For this lapse the publisher was awarded a “Golden Turkey” by the American Society of Indexers.  Soon after announcing the Award, ASI [...]

Another anniversary of 9/11 has passed. Along with memories of the physical events of that day, I still recall the conceptual haze that filled the air like the spreading column of dark smoke rising from the twin towers. I have been thinking this past week of the onset of this decade’s semantic wars. Book indexers, [...]