How to Alphabetize

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By resar
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Alphabetize

There are many situations where listing things in alphabetical order can make items easier to find. Improve your alphabetizing skills and improve your organization skills!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Items to Alphabetize
Dictionary

Step 1

refresh your memory on correct alphabetical order before you begin

Learn Your Alphabet

The first step to becoming a good alphabetizer is making sure you know the correct alphabetical order. In English, this 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. We learn the alphabet in this order as small children but sadly the information does not stick in everyone's memory. Refresh your memory or make a cheat sheet if you need to do a large amount of alphabetizing and find yourself struggling with the order.
Step 2

Start Sorting

Do a rough sort of the items needing to be alphabetized. Put everything beginning with A into one group/pile and work your way through until you have everything sorted out by first letter.
Step 3

Special Consideration #1: Proper Names
Issac Asimov comes before Jake Issacs, as personal names are by listed surname/family name. Previously the convention was:
Asimov, Issac
Issacs, Jake

but today one often sees:
Issac Asimov
Jake Issacs

whichever you choose, make sure that the name is listed by surname, not first name. This does not apply to City/State or City/Names. This means that Paris, France goes in the "P" section, not the "F" section and Baltimore, Maryland goes in the "B" section, not the "M" section.
Step 4

caution, multiple sortings ahead!

Refine Sort

Now comes the more difficult sorting. After getting everything into piles by first letter, we move to sorting by second letter and then third letter until we finish. For example:
Aardvark
Able
Accent
Ace
Axe
Axel

noting especially that the two "c"s in "accent" do not count as a single letter and that "axel" follows "axe" because "axe" has no letter in the fourth spot and blank spots come first.
Step 5

poor a, an & the don't count in alphabetical order

Special Consideration #2: A, An, The

Modern convention has it that "a, an, and the" are ignored in alphabetizing titles. For Example:

An Aardvark's Christmas Parade
The Indignant Aardvark
A Little Aardvark's Holiday Special

Not:

A Little Aardvark's Holiday Special
An Aardvark's Christmas Parade
The Indignant Aardvark

Why? Because many, many titles begin with a, an, the and so sorting them by these articles instead of by their first "real" word makes them much easier to find, especially if you're looking for something manually in a list!
Step 6

Special Consideration #3: Special Characters

Treat ampersand (&) as its word, "and". Put foreign letters in the approximate position they would hold if they existed in the English alphabet, for example, Spanish "LL" after the English "L". Consult a reference from the native language of the word in question when in doubt.