'It is a small and often neglected word. But the word 'the' has just won Australia's Glenda Browne international recognition in the form of an Ig Nobel prize.

The Ig Nobels, parodies of the real Nobel Prizes, are awarded annually to applaud achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think.

Browne, a professional indexer who once worked in the field of biotechnology, is this year's winner in the literature category.

Her award honours a scholarly article addressing a tricky question. Where should names starting with 'the' appear in indexes?

While contemplating this issue, she looked through indexes filled with names like The American Journal of Psychiatry, and The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics on one hand, but British Journal of Pharmacology and Journal of Microscopy on the other.

Browne's work involves creating alphabetical lists of key terms that appear in books, so readers can find the material they want. So the 'the' question is crucial to indexers like her.

But throughout her 18-year career she grew increasingly aware that the humble 'the' was a problem.

"I don't know why I started thinking about it," she says from her home in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

"In indexing, we follow rules but sometimes the rules don't make sense and that bothered me."

The conundrum with 'the' is deciding how to index names or titles that include it, she explains. Should 'The Who' be indexed as 'Who, The', or 'The Who'?

The key question is finding a method that would make the index easiest to use, Browne says.

Her deceptively simple solution was published in 2001 in the journal The Indexer.

Index entries for names with 'the' in them should be indexed both with and without the 'the', so to speak, she says.

"I decided, look, people think in different ways, so let's put it in the index in two places."

It was a win-win solution, and a logical conclusion.

"Similar arguments apply to 'a' and 'an', but these are beyond the scope of this article," she notes in her paper.

Browne says the indexing skills she needs to resolve issues such as the 'the' dilemma are similar to those needed for scientific endeavour.

"I think they both have a mix of the analytical and the creative," she says.

"You need to focus very carefully, but you also need to be able to take a broad point of view."'