Manuscript Preparation, Copyediting, and Proofreading

Q. I know that endnotes are indexed. But which page number is listed—the page where the callout occurs, or the page where the actual endnote appears? If the latter, all subjects in endnotes on that page will have the same page number . . . the endnote page. Is that correct?

A. That’s right. The idea of an index is to tell the reader where to locate the information. If you point her to the page of the callout, she will find nothing there but a callout, and she won’t know the page number of the corresponding endnote, so she’ll have to browse through the endnotes to find the right one. It’s much more efficient (and kinder) to send her directly to the page where the note appears (along with the note number, of course).