The camera-ready manuscript must be finished before the index is prepared. If a change must be made after the index is prepared, the text on each page of the book cannot shift to the next page. Because of the way the computer software works, you can sometimes change a lot on a page without shifting the text and sometimes not even one punctuation mark. It all depends on where the change is located. For instance, if the index is prepared and you want to add a few sentences on the last page of the chapter and in that particular location the page is half empty, then I can make the changes without affecting the index entries. On the other extreme, if you want to correct the spelling of your best friend's name by adding one letter to the last line of the page, and as a result the whole line shifts to the next page, and that causes the text on the rest of the chapter to shift, then all the index entries from that point on are wrong. So you can re-do the index or have your best friend angry with you for misspelling his name. The best way to avoid this is to wait to do the index until all of the errors have been corrected. (Note I say "corrected." Many authors think once they have marked the error they can begin the index while I make the final changes. They run a big risk doing this.)

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