I get a lot of information online, but I find that for questions about writing assignments, my handbook is still my best bet. Using the index in A Writer’s Reference makes finding information easy.

You’ll find the index at the back of your handbook. As you can see, it’s basically a list of topics in the book, in alphabetical order.

Flipping through the index will show you what the handbook has to offer.

Some of the topics you’ll find also have subtopics. I’ll show you what I mean.

Let’s say you’re writing an essay and you plan to include a few quotations. You can’t remember whether a comma goes inside or outside the quotations marks. I get stuck on this, too.

Look up commas in the index. “Commas” is a main topic that lists lots of subtopics underneath. Scanning through them, you’ll find that “with quotation marks” is a subtopic.

From there, you can jump to Tab P, sections P1-h and P5-e for help with using commas with quotation marks.

The index is easy to use. It includes technical terms like coherence and ellipsis mark that you might not know or remember, but no worries: It also includes terms you might use instead, like choppy and dots.

Check out the video on menus in this series for more help navigating your handbook.