by Milt Vine
You're reading a novel and a word stumps you. You reach for the dictionary. Thank goodness there are those nifty little thumb indents that alphabetize the sections. Imagine how cumbersome it would be to have to flip through that huge volume to find the one page with your word on it.
You're in the middle of a meeting with a client and you need the name of a bindery you can call to ask about a folding layout. You grab the handy reference book on your desk. Voilá! There's a tab with the word Bindery. You flip right to the list of finishing houses.
Welcome to the world of indexes and tabs . . . the ancient art of differentiating sections of a book, manual or binder. Many commercial printers shy away from this work because they are unfamiliar with the processes. There's no reason to. You and your bindery can team together to take advantage of these opportunities. Because so much of the production process is now automated, this work can yield some healthy profit margins.
Some basics. Tabs are extensions of a page whereas indexing involves diecutting into a page. An easy way to visualize the principles of tabbing and indexing is to think about the folders you buy for your file cabinet. While file folders employ tabbing, the idea is the same for indexing. These processes are frequently confused with wafer tabs that are used to seal the face of a piece for mailing. But, let's leave that discussion for a later time.
Packages of premanufactured folders can come with three, six, even twenty-five tabs, depending on the width of each tab and the width of your file cabinet. If you need more folders to hold your files, you've moved into the stepping concept. Simply put, you buy another set of the same folders and place them into your cabinet, repeating the tabbed sequence. The last tab in the first group of folders is at one end, the first tab of the second group of folders begins at the other end.
Of course, the amount of information that needs to go on the index or tab determines the size of each. Correspondingly, the size of the book or document determines the number of indexes or tabs you can functionally fit along the face of a book.
Tabbing. By far, the most common method of segmenting sections in mechanical-bound manuals and instructional materials, tabbing has its own set of rules. Generally, the number of tabs in a bank can be expressed by a fraction. For example, four tabs equal a 1/4 cut; nine tabs equal a 1/9 cut. The minimum tab width that can be cut using equipment is .43", which results in a 1/25th cut tab. To determine the size of tabs, here's a formula: measure overall size of the finished sheet. Subtract the inset margin from each end of the sheet. (The standard inset margin is 1/8".) Then, divide the remainder by the number of tabs you need in a bank.
For standard tabs, you should center type across the tab width, subtract 1/32" from the bottom of the tab, then position it for best appearance from top to bottom.
A tab divider should be of sufficient weight to withstand heavy use and handling. Appropriate paper choices for tabs used in books and binders range from 60# to 110# index stocks. Mylar and other coatings are often applied to the face of the tab and to the spine to add extra protection. I'll talk more about these in my next column.
Indexing. Indexing is generally used in high-volume, high page-count publications and is usually performed by printers and postpress houses in the publishing industry. Since it is so specialized, I won't go into much detail. However, here are few things you should know.
The most widely-used indexing method is called thumb indexing, created by cutting rounded notches into the face of the book from head to tail and front to back. The bible and, yes, dictionaries, offer great examples of thumb indexing.
A variation on the theme is stepped indexing. This is used when there are more sections than the length of a book can accommodate in a single row, or bank, of indexes or tabs. A second, or third, bank of indexes is cut into the body of a bound and trimmed book beneath the first row of indexes. Again, think of the file folder/cabinet example.
Stay tuned for the next episode; I'll discuss tabbing and coatings, inks and paper stocks. In the meantime, don't pass up this work. It could provide your firm with another competitive advantage.
Milt Vine is president of Seattle Bindery, a post-production house specializing in
index tabbing in addition to providing folding, stitching, perfect binding, scoring ,
perforating and trimming services for the trade. You can reach Milt at 206/682-2558.
© 1996, Seattle Bindery. Reprinted from Northwest Trader, June 1996.