Alphabetical Order
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Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a s ...
. It is one of the methods of
collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is the generalization of the alphabetical order to other data types, such as sequences of numbers or other ordered
mathematical object A mathematical object is an abstract concept arising in mathematics. In the usual language of mathematics, an ''object'' is anything that has been (or could be) formally defined, and with which one may do deductive reasoning and mathematical ...
s. When applied to strings or sequences that may contain digits, numbers or more elaborate types of elements, in addition to alphabetical characters, the alphabetical order is generally called a lexicographical order. To determine which of two strings of characters comes first when arranging in alphabetical order, their first letters are compared. If they differ, then the string whose first letter comes earlier in the alphabet comes before the other string. If the first letters are the same, then the second letters are compared, and so on. If a position is reached where one string has no more letters to compare while the other does, then the first (shorter) string is deemed to come first in alphabetical order.
Capital letter Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
s (upper case) are generally considered to be identical to their corresponding lower case letters for the purposes of alphabetical ordering, although conventions may be adopted to handle situations where two strings differ ''only'' in capitalization. Various conventions also exist for the handling of strings containing
space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually con ...
s, modified letters (such as those with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s), and non-letter characters such as marks of
punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. A ...
. The result of placing a set of words or strings in alphabetical order is that all of the strings beginning with the same letter are grouped together; within that grouping all words beginning with the same two-letter sequence are grouped together; and so on. The system thus tends to maximize the number of common initial letters between adjacent words.


History

Alphabetical order was first used in the 1st millennium BCE by Northwest Semitic scribes using the
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
system. However, a range of other methods of classifying and ordering material, including geographical, chronological, hierarchical and by category, were preferred over alphabetical order for centuries. The
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
is dated to the 6th–7th centuries BCE. In the
Book of Jeremiah The Book of Jeremiah ( he, ספר יִרְמְיָהוּ) is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the boo ...
, the prophet utilizes the
Atbash Atbash ( he, אתבש; also transliterated Atbaš) is a monoalphabetic substitution cipher originally used to encrypt the Hebrew alphabet. It can be modified for use with any known writing system with a standard collating order. Encryption Th ...
substitution cipher In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, t ...
, based on alphabetical order. Similarly, biblical authors used
acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fr ...
s based on the (ordered)
Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewis ...
. The first effective use of alphabetical order as a cataloging device among scholars may have been in ancient Alexandria, in the
Great Library of Alexandria The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The Library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, t ...
, which was founded around 300 BCE. The poet and scholar
Callimachus Callimachus (; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide variet ...
, who worked there, is thought to have created the world's first
library catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also ...
, known as the Pinakes, with scrolls shelved in alphabetical order of the first letter of authors' names. In the 1st century BC, Roman writer Varro compiled alphabetic lists of authors and titles. In the 2nd century CE,
Sextus Pompeius Festus Sextus Pompeius Festus, usually known simply as Festus, was a Roman grammarian who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo ( Narbonne) in Gaul. Work He made a 20-volume epitome of Verrius Flaccus's voluminous and encycl ...
wrote an encyclopedic
epitome An epitome (; gr, ἐπιτομή, from ἐπιτέμνειν ''epitemnein'' meaning "to cut short") is a summary or miniature form, or an instance that represents a larger reality, also used as a synonym for embodiment. Epitomacy represents "t ...
of the works of Verrius Flaccus, '' De verborum significatu'', with entries in alphabetic order. In the 3rd century CE, Harpocration wrote a
Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the '' Iliad'' and the '' Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of ...
ic lexicon alphabetized by all letters. In the 10th century, the author of the ''
Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; grc-x-medieval, Σοῦδα, Soûda; la, Suidae Lexicon) is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas (Σούδας) or Souidas ...
'' used alphabetic order with phonetic variations. Alphabetical order as an aid to consultation started to enter the mainstream of
Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
an intellectual life in the second half of the 12th century, when alphabetical tools were developed to help preachers analyse biblical vocabulary. This led to the compilation of alphabetical concordances of the Bible by the Dominican friars in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
in the 13th century, under Hugh of Saint Cher. Older reference works such as St. Jerome's ''Interpretations of Hebrew Names'' were alphabetized for ease of consultation. The use of alphabetical order was initially resisted by scholars, who expected their students to master their area of study according to its own rational structures; its success was driven by such tools as Robert Kilwardby's index to the works of
St. Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afri ...
, which helped readers access the full original text instead of depending on the compilations of
excerpts Excerpta (Latin for "excerpts") may refer to: *''Excerpta Barocciana'', extracts from Late Antique church historians found in Codex Baroccianus 142 *''Excerpta Constantiniana'', 53-volume Greek anthology of excerpts from historians *''Excerpta Lati ...
which had become prominent in 12th century
scholasticism Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translat ...
. The adoption of alphabetical order was part of the transition from the primacy of
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...
to that of written works. The idea of ordering information by the order of the alphabet also met resistance from the compilers of encyclopaedias in the 12th and 13th centuries, who were all devout churchmen. They preferred to organise their material theologically – in the order of God's creation, starting with ''Deus'' (meaning God). In 1604 Robert Cawdrey had to explain in '' Table Alphabeticall'', the first monolingual English dictionary, "Nowe if the word, which thou art desirous to finde, begin with (a) then looke in the beginning of this Table, but if with (v) looke towards the end". Although as late as 1803
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lak ...
condemned encyclopedias with "an arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters", many lists are today based on this principle. Arrangement in alphabetical order can be seen as a force for democratising access to information, as it does not require extensive prior knowledge to find what was needed.


Ordering in the Latin script


Basic order and examples

The standard order of the modern ISO basic Latin alphabet is: :A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z An example of straightforward alphabetical ordering follows: *''As; Aster; Astrolabe; Astronomy; Astrophysics; At; Ataman; Attack; Baa'' Another example: *''Barnacle; Be; Been; Benefit; Bent'' The above words are ordered alphabetically. ''As'' comes before ''Aster'' because they begin with the same two letters and ''As'' has no more letters after that whereas ''Aster'' does. The next three words come after ''Aster'' because their fourth letter (the first one that differs) is ''r'', which comes after ''e'' (the fourth letter of ''Aster'') in the alphabet. Those words themselves are ordered based on their sixth letters (''l'', ''n'' and ''p'' respectively). Then comes ''At'', which differs from the preceding words in the second letter (''t'' comes after ''s''). ''Ataman'' comes after ''At'' for the same reason that ''Aster'' came after ''As''. ''Attack'' follows ''Ataman'' based on comparison of their third letters, and ''Baa'' comes after all of the others because it has a different first letter.


Treatment of multiword strings

When some of the strings being ordered consist of more than one word, i.e., they contain
spaces Spaces may refer to: * Google Spaces (app), a cross-platform application for group messaging and sharing * Windows Live Spaces, the next generation of MSN Spaces * Spaces (software), a virtual desktop manager implemented in Mac OS X Leopard * Spac ...
or other separators such as
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figur ...
s, then two basic approaches may be taken. In the first approach, all strings are ordered initially according to their first word, as in the sequence: *''Oak; Oak Hill; Oak Ridge; Oakley Park; Oakley River'' *:where all strings beginning with the separate word ''Oak'' precede all those beginning ''Oakley'', because ''Oak'' precedes ''Oakley'' in alphabetical order. In the second approach, strings are alphabetized as if they had no spaces, giving the sequence: *''Oak; Oak Hill; Oakley Park; Oakley River; Oak Ridge'' *:where ''Oak Ridge'' now comes after the ''Oakley'' strings, as it would if it were written "Oakridge". The second approach is the one usually taken in dictionaries, and it is thus often called '' dictionary order'' by publishers. The first approach has often been used in book indexes, although each publisher traditionally set its own standards for which approach to use therein; there was no ISO standard for book indexes ( ISO 999) before 1975.


Special cases


Modified letters

In French, modified letters (such as those with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s) are treated the same as the base letter for alphabetical ordering purposes. For example, ''rôle'' comes between ''rock'' and ''rose'', as if it were written ''role''. However, languages that use such letters systematically generally have their own ordering rules. See below.


Ordering by surname

In most cultures where family names are written after given names, it is still desired to sort lists of names (as in telephone directories) by family name first. In this case, names need to be reordered to be sorted correctly. For example, Juan Hernandes and Brian O'Leary should be sorted as "Hernandes, Juan" and "O'Leary, Brian" even if they are not written this way. Capturing this rule in a computer collation algorithm is complex, and simple attempts will fail. For example, unless the algorithm has at its disposal an extensive list of family names, there is no way to decide if "Gillian Lucille van der Waal" is "van der Waal, Gillian Lucille", "Waal, Gillian Lucille van der", or even "Lucille van der Waal, Gillian". Ordering by surname is frequently encountered in academic contexts. Within a single multi-author paper, ordering the authors alphabetically by surname, rather than by other methods such as reverse seniority or subjective degree of contribution to the paper, is seen as a way of "acknowledg ngsimilar contributions" or "avoid ngdisharmony in collaborating groups". The practice in certain fields of ordering
citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...
s in bibliographies by the surnames of their authors has been found to create bias in favour of authors with surnames which appear earlier in the alphabet, while this effect does not appear in fields in which bibliographies are ordered chronologically.


''The'' and other common words

If a phrase begins with a very common word (such as "the", "a" or "an", called articles in grammar), that word is sometimes ignored or moved to the end of the phrase, but this is not always the case. For example, the book " The Shining" might be treated as "Shining", or "Shining, The" and therefore before the book title "
Summer of Sam ''Summer of Sam'' is a 1999 American crime thriller film about the 1977 David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) serial murders and their effect on a group of fictional residents of an Italian-American neighborhood in The Bronx in the late 1970s. The kill ...
". However, it may also be treated as simply "The Shining" and after "Summer of Sam". Similarly, " A Wrinkle in Time" might be treated as "Wrinkle in Time", "Wrinkle in Time, A", or "A Wrinkle in Time". All three alphabetization methods are fairly easy to create by algorithm, but many programs rely on simple lexicographic ordering instead.


''Mac'' prefixes

The prefixes ''M'' and ''Mc'' in Irish and Scottish surnames are abbreviations for ''Mac'' and are sometimes alphabetized as if the spelling is ''Mac'' in full. Thus ''McKinley'' might be listed before ''Mackintosh'' (as it would be if it had been spelled out as "MacKinley"). Since the advent of computer-sorted lists, this type of alphabetization is less frequently encountered, though it is still used in British telephone directories.


''St'' prefix

The prefix ''St'' or ''St.'' is an abbreviation of "Saint", and is traditionally alphabetized as if the spelling is ''Saint'' in full. Thus in a gazetteer ''St John's'' might be listed before ''Salem'' (as if it would be if it had been spelled out as "Saint John's"). Since the advent of computer-sorted lists, this type of alphabetization is less frequently encountered, though it is still sometimes used.


Ligatures

Ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
(two or more letters merged into one symbol) which are not considered distinct letters, such as Æ and Œ in English, are typically collated as if the letters were separate—"æther" and "aether" would be ordered the same relative to all other words. This is true even when the ligature is not purely stylistic, such as in
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s and brand names. Special rules may need to be adopted to sort strings which vary only by whether two letters are joined by a ligature.


Treatment of numerals

When some of the strings contain numerals (or other non-letter characters), various approaches are possible. Sometimes such characters are treated as if they came before or after all the letters of the alphabet. Another method is for numbers to be sorted alphabetically as they would be spelled: for example '' 1776'' would be sorted as if spelled out "seventeen seventy-six", and ''
24 heures du Mans 4 (four) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. In mathematics Four is the smallest c ...
'' as if spelled "vingt-quatre..." (French for "twenty-four"). When numerals or other symbols are used as special graphical forms of letters, as ''1337'' for leet or the movie '' Seven'' (which was stylised as ''Se7en''), they may be sorted as if they were those letters.
Natural sort order In computing, natural sort order (or natural sorting) is the ordering of strings in alphabetical order, except that multi-digit numbers are treated atomically, i.e., as if they were a single character. Natural sort order has been promoted as being ...
orders strings alphabetically, except that multi-digit numbers are treated as a single character and ordered by the value of the number encoded by the digits. In the case of
monarch A monarch is a head of stateWebster's II New College DictionarMonarch Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest authority ...
s and
pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
s, although their numbers are in Roman numerals and resemble letters, they are normally arranged in numerical order: so, for example, even though V comes after I, the Danish king Christian IX comes after his predecessor Christian VIII.


Language-specific conventions

Languages which use an extended Latin alphabet generally have their own conventions for treatment of the extra letters. Also in some languages certain digraphs are treated as single letters for collation purposes. For example, the 29-letter alphabet of Spanish treats ''ñ'' as a basic letter following ''n'', and formerly treated the digraphs ''ch'' and ''ll'' as basic letters following ''c'' and ''l'', respectively. ''Ch'' and ''ll'' are still considered letters, but are now alphabetized as two-letter combinations. (The new alphabetization rule was issued by the Royal Spanish Academy in 1994.) On the other hand, the digraph ''rr'' follows ''rqu'' as expected, and did so even before the 1994 alphabetization rule. In a few cases, such as
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
Kiowa Kiowa () people are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th a ...
, the alphabet has been completely reordered. Alphabetization rules applied in various languages are listed below. * In
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
, there are two main orders of the 28 letter alphabet used today. The standard and most commonly used is the , which was coined by the early Arab linguist and features a visual ordering method where for example the letters baa, taa, Θaa ب ت ث are ordered base on shape of baa. The original
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
order, which phonethically resembles that of other
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...
as well as Latin, is still in use today, usually limited for ordering lists in a document, analogous to Roman Numerals. When the ''abjadiyya'' is used in numbering, a unique abstracted way of writing the letters must be used in order to distinguish those letters from three first letter of the sentence as well as from numbers. For example, the Alef "ا" which looks identical to the Hindi numeral one "١", a small oval loop extends clockwise of the letter's bottom, followed by a short tail. Although these characters are rarely used digitally, they have been recognized under
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
as Arabic Mathematical Alphabet, with ranges from 1EE00 TO 1EEFF. There is a less common order, which is ordered phonetically , starting from the deep throat sound haa to the lip most meem. This ingenious oder was coined by Al-faraheedi. * In
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
, there are eight additional letters to the standard Latin alphabet. Five of them are vowels: i, ı, ö, ü, ə and three are consonants: ç, ş, ğ. The alphabet is the same as the
Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
, with the same sounds written with the same letters, except for three additional letters: q, x and ə for sounds that do not exist in Turkish. Although all the "Turkish letters" are collated in their "normal" alphabetical order like in Turkish, the three extra letters are collated arbitrarily after letters whose sounds approach theirs. So, q is collated just after k, x (pronounced like a German ''ch'') is collated just after h and ə (pronounced roughly like an English short ''a'') is collated just after e. * In Breton, there is no "c", "q", "x" but there are the digraphs "ch" and "c'h", which are collated between "b" and "d". For example: « buzhugenn, chug, c'hoar, daeraouenn » (earthworm, juice, sister, teardrop). * In Czech and Slovak, accented vowels have secondary collating weight – compared to other letters, they are treated as their unaccented forms (in Czech, A-Á, E-É-Ě, I-Í, O-Ó, U-Ú-Ů, Y-Ý, and in Slovak, A-Á-Ä, E-É, I-Í, O-Ó-Ô, U-Ú, Y-Ý), but then they are sorted after the unaccented letters (for example, the correct lexicographic order is baa, baá, báa, báá, bab, báb, bac, bác, bač, báč
n Czech N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
and baa, baá, baä, báa, báá, báä, bäa, bäá, bää, bab, báb, bäb, bac, bác, bäc, bač, báč, bäč n Slovak. Accented consonants have primary collating weight and are collated immediately after their unaccented counterparts, with exception of Ď, Ň and Ť (in Czech) and Ď, Ĺ, Ľ, Ň, Ŕ and Ť (in Slovak), which have again secondary weight. CH is considered to be a separate letter and goes between H and I. In Slovak, DZ and are also considered separate letters and are positioned between Ď and E. * In the Danish and Norwegian alphabets, the same extra vowels as in Swedish (see below) are also present but in a different order and with different
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s (..., X, Y, Z, Æ, Ø, Å). Also, "Aa" collates as an equivalent to "Å". The Danish alphabet has traditionally seen "W" as a variant of "V", but today "W" is considered a separate letter. * In Dutch the combination IJ (representing IJ) was formerly to be collated as Y (or sometimes as a separate letter: Y < IJ < Z), but is currently mostly collated as 2 letters (II < IJ < IK). Exceptions are phone directories; IJ is always collated as Y here because in many Dutch family names Y is used where modern spelling would require IJ. Note that a word starting with ij that is written with a capital I is also written with a capital J, for example, the town IJmuiden, the river
IJssel The IJssel (; nds-nl, Iessel(t) ) is a Dutch distributary of the river Rhine that flows northward and ultimately discharges into the IJsselmeer (before the 1932 completion of the Afsluitdijk known as the Zuiderzee), a North Sea natural harbo ...
and the country IJsland (
Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...
). * In
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
, consonants with
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
accents ( ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ), as well as ŭ (u with
breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in ...
), are counted as separate letters and collated separately (c, ĉ, d, e, f, g, ĝ, h, ĥ, i, j, ĵ ... s, ŝ, t, u, ŭ, v, z). * In Estonian õ, ä, ö and ü are considered separate letters and collate after w. Letters š, z and ž appear in loanwords and foreign proper names only and follow the letter s in the
Estonian alphabet Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...
, which otherwise does not differ from the basic Latin alphabet. * The
Faroese alphabet Faroese orthography is the method employed to write the Faroese language, using a 29-letter Latin alphabet. Alphabet The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin script: * Eth (Faroese ') never appears at the beginning ...
also has some of the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish extra letters, namely Æ and Ø. Furthermore, the
Faroese alphabet Faroese orthography is the method employed to write the Faroese language, using a 29-letter Latin alphabet. Alphabet The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin script: * Eth (Faroese ') never appears at the beginning ...
uses the Icelandic eth, which follows the D. Five of the six vowels A, I, O, U and Y can get accents and are after that considered separate letters. The consonants C, Q, X, W and Z are not found. Therefore, the first five letters are A, Á, B, D and Ð, and the last five are V, Y, Ý, Æ, Ø * In Filipino (Tagalog) and other Philippine languages, the letter Ng is treated as a separate letter. It is pronounced as in ''sing'', ''ping-pong'', etc. By itself, it is pronounced ''nang'', but in general Filipino orthography, it is spelled as if it were two separate letters (n and g). Also, letter derivatives (such as Ñ) immediately follow the base letter. Filipino also is written with diacritics, but their use is very rare (except the
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin ''titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
). * The Finnish alphabet and collating rules are the same as those of Swedish. * For
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, the ''last'' accent in a given word determines the order. For example, in French, the following four words would be sorted this way: cote < côte < coté < côté. * In German letters with umlaut ( Ä, Ö, Ü) are treated generally just like their non-umlauted versions; ß is always sorted as ss. This makes the alphabetic order Arbeit, Arg, Ärgerlich, Argument, Arm, Assistant, Aßlar, Assoziation. For phone directories and similar lists of names, the umlauts are to be collated like the letter combinations "ae", "oe", "ue" because a number of German surnames appear both with umlaut and in the non-umlauted form with "e" (Müller/Mueller). This makes the alphabetic order Udet, Übelacker, Uell, Ülle, Ueve, Üxküll, Uffenbach. * The Hungarian vowels have accents, umlauts, and double accents, while consonants are written with single, double (digraphs) or triple (trigraph) characters. In collating, accented vowels are equivalent with their non-accented counterparts and double and triple characters follow their single originals. Hungarian alphabetic order is: A=Á, B, C, Cs, D, Dz, Dzs, E=É, F, G, Gy, H, I=Í, J, K, L, Ly, M, N, Ny, O=Ó, Ö=Ő, P, Q, R, S, Sz, T, Ty, U=Ú, Ü=Ű, V, W, X, Y, Z, Zs. (Before 1984, ''dz'' and ''dzs'' were not considered single letters for collation, but two letters each, d+z and d+zs instead.) It means that e.g. ''nádcukor'' should precede ''nádcsomó'' (even though ''s'' normally precedes ''u''), since ''c'' precedes ''cs'' in the collation. Difference in vowel length should only be taken into consideration if the two words are otherwise identical (e.g. ''egér, éger''). Spaces and hyphens within phrases are ignored in collation. ''Ch'' also occurs as a digraph in certain words but it is not considered as a grapheme on its own right in terms of collation. *:A particular feature of Hungarian collation is that contracted forms of double di- and trigraphs (such as from ''gy + gy'' or from ''dzs + dzs'') should be collated as if they were written in full (independently of the fact of the contraction and the elements of the di- or trigraphs). For example, ''kaszinó'' should precede ''kassza'' (even though the fourth character ''z'' would normally come after ''s'' in the alphabet), because the fourth "character" (
grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...
) of the word ''kassza'' is considered a second ''sz'' (decomposing ''ssz'' into ''sz + sz''), which does follow ''i'' (in ''kaszinó''). * In Icelandic, Þ is added, and D is followed by Ð. Each vowel (A, E, I, O, U, Y) is followed by its correspondent with acute: Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý. There is no Z, so the alphabet ends: ... X, Y, Ý, Þ, Æ, Ö. ** Both letters were also used by
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
scribes who also used the Runic letter Wynn to represent /w/. ** Þ (called thorn; lowercase þ) is also a Runic letter. ** Ð (called eth; lowercase ð) is the letter D with an added stroke. *
Kiowa Kiowa () people are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th a ...
is ordered on phonetic principles, like the
Brahmic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
, rather than on the historical Latin order. Vowels come first, then stop consonants ordered from the front to the back of the mouth, and from negative to positive voice-onset time, then the affricates, fricatives, liquids, and nasals: :: A, AU, E, I, O, U, B, F, P, V, D, J, T, TH, G, C, K, Q, CH, X, S, Z, L, Y, W, H, M, N * In
Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...
, specifically Lithuanian letters go after their Latin originals. Another change is that Y comes just before J: ... G, H, I, Į, Y, J, K... * In Polish, specifically Polish letters derived from the Latin alphabet are collated after their originals: A, Ą, B, C, Ć, D, E, Ę, ..., L, Ł, M, N, Ń, O, Ó, P, ..., S, Ś, T, ..., Z, Ź, Ż. The digraphs for collation purposes are treated as if they were two separate letters. * In Portuguese, the collating order is just like in English: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Digraphs and letters with diacritics are not included in the alphabet. * In Romanian, special characters derived from the Latin alphabet are collated after their originals: A, Ă, Â, ..., I, Î, ..., S, Ș, T, Ț, ..., Z. * In
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
and other related South Slavic languages, the five accented characters and three conjoined characters are sorted after the originals: ..., C, Č, Ć, D, DŽ, Đ, E, ..., L, LJ, M, N, NJ, O, ..., S, Š, T, ..., Z, Ž. * Spanish treated (until 1994) "CH" and "LL" as single letters, giving an ordering of '', , '' and '', , .'' This is not true any more since in 1994 the
RAE Rae may refer to: People *Rae (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Rae (surname), including a list of people with the surname Nicknames for *Rachel (given name) * Rachelle *Raquel *Raven (given name) *Reema * Reena (di ...
adopted the more conventional usage, and now LL is collated between LK and LM, and CH between CG and CI. The six characters with diacritics Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ü are treated as the original letters A, E, I, O, U, for example: '', , , , .'' The only Spanish-specific collating question is Ñ () as a different letter collated after N. * In the Swedish alphabet, there are three extra
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
s placed at its end (..., X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö), similar to the Danish and Norwegian alphabet, but with different glyphs and a different collating order. The letter "W" has been treated as a variant of "V", but in the 13th edition of '' Svenska Akademiens ordlista'' (2006) "W" was considered a separate letter. * In the
Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet ( tr, ) is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which ( Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirem ...
there are 6 additional letters: ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş, and ü (but no q, w, and x). They are collated with ç after c, ğ after g, ı ''before'' i, ö after o, ş after s, and ü after u. Originally, when the alphabet was introduced in 1928, ı was collated after i, but the order was changed later so that letters having shapes containing dots, cedilles or other adorning marks always follow the letters with corresponding bare shapes. Note that in Turkish orthography the letter I is the majuscule of dotless ı, whereas İ is the majuscule of dotted i. * In many
Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic l ...
(such as
Azeri Azerbaijanis (; az, Azərbaycanlılar, ), Azeris ( az, Azərilər, ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( az, Azərbaycan Türkləri, ) are a Turkic people living mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. They are the second-most numer ...
or the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar), there used to be the letter Gha (Ƣƣ), which came between G and H. It is now in disuse. * In Vietnamese, there are 7 additional letters: ă, â, đ, ê, ô, ơ, ư while f, j, w, z are absent, even though they are still in some use (like Internet address, foreign loan language). "f" is replaced by the combination "ph". The same as for "w" is "qu". * In Volapük ä, ö and ü are counted as separate letters and collated separately (a, ä, b ... o, ö, p ... u, ü, v) while q and w are absent. * In
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
the digraphs CH, DD, FF, NG, LL, PH, RH, and TH are treated as single letters, and each is listed after the first character of the pair (except for NG which is listed after G), producing the order A, B, C, CH, D, DD, E, F, FF, G, NG, H, and so on. It can sometimes happen, however, that word compounding results in the juxtaposition of two letters which do ''not'' form a digraph. An example is the word LLONGYFARCH (composed from LLON + GYFARCH). This results in such an ordering as, for example, LAWR, LWCUS, LLONG, LLOM, LLONGYFARCH (NG is a digraph in LLONG, but not in LLONGYFARCH). The letter combination R+H (as distinct from the digraph RH) may similarly arise by juxtaposition in compounds, although this tends not to produce any pairs in which misidentification could affect the ordering. For the other potentially confusing letter combinations that may occur – namely, D+D and L+L – a hyphen is used in the spelling (e.g. AD-DAL, CHWIL-LYS).


Automation

Collation algorithms (in combination with
sorting algorithm In computer science, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a list into an order. The most frequently used orders are numerical order and lexicographical order, and either ascending or descending. Efficient sorting is importan ...
s) are used in computer programming to place strings in alphabetical order. A standard example is the
Unicode Collation Algorithm The Unicode collation algorithm (UCA) is an algorithm defined in Unicode Technical Report #10, which is a customizable method to produce binary keys from strings representing text in any writing system and language that can be represented with Uni ...
, which can be used to put strings containing any
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
symbols into (an extension of) alphabetical order. It can be made to conform to most of the language-specific conventions described above by tailoring its default collation table. Several such tailorings are collected in Common Locale Data Repository.


Similar orderings

The principle behind alphabetical ordering can still be applied in languages that do not strictly speaking use an
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a s ...
– for example, they may be written using a syllabary or
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
– provided the symbols used have an established ordering. For
logograph In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...
ic writing systems, such as Chinese
hanzi Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...
or Japanese
kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subse ...
, the method of radical-and-stroke sorting is frequently used as a way of defining an ordering on the symbols. Japanese sometimes uses pronunciation order, most commonly with the
Gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are disp ...
order but sometimes with the older
Iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). Th ...
ordering. In mathematics, lexicographical order is a means of ordering sequences in a manner analogous to that used to produce alphabetical order. Some computer applications use a version of alphabetical order that can be achieved using a very simple
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
, based purely on the
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
or
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
codes for characters. This may have non-standard effects such as placing all capital letters before lower-case ones. See ASCIIbetical order. A
rhyming dictionary A rhyming dictionary is a specialized dictionary designed for use in writing poetry and lyrics. In a rhyming dictionary, words are categorized into equivalence classes that consist of words that rhyme with one another. They also typically suppor ...
is based on sorting words in alphabetical order starting from the last to the first letter of the word.


See also

*
Collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
* Sorting


References


Further reading

* Chauvin, Yvonne. ''Pratique du classement alphabétique''. 4th ed. Paris: Bordas, 1977. * Flanders, Judith. ''A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order''. New York: Basic Books / Hatchette Books, 2020. {{Authority control Alphabets Collation ta:அகரவரிசை