In a Book, What is an Appendix?
An appendix is a section at the end of a book which includes supplementary information which may be of interest or use to the reader. Appendices are also used to support the qualifications of the author, and to increase the credibility of the publication. Appendices are not always explicitly labeled as such: they may also be known as an “index” or “bibliography,” although in strict point of fact, these terms refer to specific types of appendices. In a book with multiple appendices, appendices are identified by letter, as in “Appendix A,” “Appendix B,” and so forth, and they may be paginated differently from the rest of the book.
All sorts of information can be included in an appendix. As a general rule, this section of a book contains information which would not have been appropriate in the primary text of the book, but is still important. Appendices may also be used to present information in a well-organized way which makes it easy to look up. For example, a book on natural childbirth might include an appendix of sources used and works which may be of additional interest to the reader, making it easy for readers to generate a list of books which they would like to read on the subject.
Raw data is presented in appendices in scientific and scholarly works, so that people can see the immediate sources for themselves. Failure to include raw data can lead to censure, or to questions about the credibility of the data analysis, since the only reason to omit data in the eyes of some readers is to cover up bad data or poor research methods.
Appendices often include indexes, itemized references to specific topics in the book. Cookbooks, for instance, have an index of recipes by ingredient, so that someone who wants to look up a recipe using onions can flip to “onions” in the index and see which pages of the book contain onion recipes. Indexes can also be useful for readers who want to be able to refer back to a topic they remembered enjoying or wanting to know more about.
An appendix can also include first hand sources like letters, photographs, cargo manifests, and other original documents in works of research. Bibliographers are fond of including this kind of information for their readers, often because they find it intriguing, but they didn't have the time to go over it in detail. Glossaries are another thing commonly found in appendices, defining terms used in the text, and it is also possible to find references like maps and technical drawings.
Some style guides recommend including footnotes in an appendix, rather than in the text itself. This can reduce distractions from footnotes, and it also gathers footnoted information in one convenient spot, rather than forcing readers to flip back and forth between numerous pages to consult different footnotes.
A book appendix should not be confused with the vermiform appendix, which is a vestigial organ found in humans, for those who may have wondered about why an organ doesn't plop out when a book is flipped to the section marked “appendix.”
Written by S.E. Smith
