table of contents
Books to be reviewed ,by Terry Freedman
One of the first things I look for when reviewing a non-fiction book is whether or not it contains an index. If it does, the next thing I check is whether the index is actually useful.
Read MoreBack in April 2014 I penned a few lines on using Word as a desktop publishing tool. On the whole it works, but, as I noted then, it does have serious limitations.
I mentioned in that article that it was impossible to use automated cross-referencing between text boxes. Since then I have discovered something even worse.
When does a document need a table of contents? I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule about this, but let’s think about it from the other end: the reader. Is your document going to be challenging to navigate? Are there sections in it which people are likely to want to refer to or likely to wish to return to, and which they can’t see at a quick glance? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, I’d say that a table of contents is imperative, even if the document is only two or three pages long.