To borrow a phrase, it takes a village to write a book. This book would really and truly not exist without the support of these creative, intelligent, encouraging, and witty members of the OTSI publishing team:
Charles Preppernau, who reviewed all the exercises to locate errors, omissions, and necessary clarifications, so that you (hopefully) won’t find any.
Debbie Berman, who patiently processed—and reprocessed—the hundreds of graphics that provide important visual references and reinforcement.
Jaime Odell, who did a superb job copyediting the text and catching the many errors resulting from my fingers functioning separately from my brain.
Jan Bednarczuk, who was willing to step in whenever required.
Jean Trenary, who managed the production processes, provided constant support, encouragement, and sanity checks, and laid out the book so beautifully.
Jeanne Craver, who provided graphic processing support.
Joyce Cox, who helped to start me on this path 25 years ago, and has been an incredible mentor and partner for the past 10 years, provided invaluable input throughout the process and created the amazing Quick Reference section. Many of the practice files and file concepts are Joyce’s work.
Kathy Krause, who provided superb developmental input and managed the content creation processes with dedication, perseverance, and a great attitude.
Lisa Van Every, who provided production support when InDesign got cranky.
Marlene Lambert, who provided support for the always-cranky indexing tools.
Rob Carr, who helped to organize the companion content.
Susie Bayers, who gathered information and tracked book elements along the way.
We’re especially thankful to the support staff at home who make it possible for our team members to devote so much of their time and attention to these projects.
Thanks also to Seth Maislin and the Potomac Indexing team for the detailed index, and to the many people at Microsoft Press and Microsoft Learning who supported this book through its inception, creation, and release, including Juliana Aldous, Rosemary Caperton, Elizabeth Hansford, Sandra Haynes, Bill Teel, Charlotte Twiss, and Michael Zuberbier.