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The first letter of a main heading is capitalized, except in certain French and foreign names, the names of chemical compounds with an italicized prefix, and standard symbols with a lower-case first letter:
In scientific texts it is important to distinguish between common and proper nouns. The first letter of a generic or family name in biology is capitalized, but that of a specific epithet or common name is not:
References to material not contained within the body of the text, such as bibliographies, glossaries, illustrations and tables, require a locator in letters as well as in numbers. The numeral can be printed in boldface type, while the element in letters is presented in italics, usually as an abbreviation:
When more than one significant reference to an item is made on the same page of a text, and each piece of information is useful, the words bis (twice) and ter (three times) may follow the page number in the index:
In indexing works with many words on a page, make the reader’s search for information easier by assigning a letter or number to each part of the page. For example, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the letters a, b, c and d refer to the top, upper middle, lower middle and bottom of the left column of a page, and e, f, g and h to the same parts of the right column (23a, 23b, 23c, etc.).
Explain all abbreviations and special reference codes in an introductory note to the index.
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