Oh, and that tricky prefix St.? It’s an abbreviation of Saint, so you must alphabetize it as if it was fully written out. Van Vogt would be alphabetized as van Vogt, A. A prefix followed by a surname should be considered as one word. Examples include D’, de, De, Del, Du, Fitz, La, le, Le, Mac, Mc, O’, St., van, and Van. Matthew Gaskell, for example, would be listed as Gaskell, G. And, on that same shelf, Macbeth comes before Merchant of Venice, which comes before Much Ado About Nothing.īut what about other names? Remember that names are always filed by the last name, first name or initial, middle name or initial. The plays of Aaron S orkin are shelved after the plays of William S hakespeare. On my bookshelf, Douglas A dams is placed before Isaac A simov because d comes before s alphabetically. If the first letters of the last name are the same, order according to the second letter. Alphabetical OrderĪlways alphabetize names by the first letter of the last name. Let’s take a look at some general rules of alphabetization as well as some of the rules which many people have difficulty with. Including, but not exclusive to, your bookshelf. Knowing those rules will help you to establish and maintain order in any record-keeping, listing, or filing system which you might have or need. There are rules to English alphabetization, and those rules are very precise. The same is true for general fiction, science fiction, mysteries, and westerns.Īlphabetizing is defined as the arrangement of words in alphabetical order. Thus, there’s a category for baking, with sub-categories for bread, cookies, and pies, among others. Cookbooks are arranged by category as well as author. If the author has more than one book, the books are then alphabetized by title. We have bookcases that are carefully alphabetized by an author’s last name. We find it necessary to shelve all those books in something which resembles an orderly system so that we can find them again. This way is often used for numbers in titles.My wife has been in the book business for…well…a very long time. Other times, they can be sorted as if they were normal, spelled-out words. Sometimes, they are listed in order from smallest to largest. Names are often written with the last names first. Names are usually ordered by Family name, not given name. Spaces and hyphens ( - ) are ignored, too.Ī formula can be used to systematically ignore a, an and the. Sometimes they are written at the end, after a comma. If many words have the same first letter, they are sorted by their second letters.Īfter that, the third and fourth letters are used until the whole list is sorted. A comes before B, and B comes before E, and E comes before L in the alphabet. Note that these may be different by language: Danish also has a letter ä, but sorts it after z, and not treated like a as in German.Ī list of items like Eric, Lydia, Andrea, and Bob is organized by their first letter. Option two: the letter is treated the same as some replacement: ä is replaced by ae, ö be oe, ü by ue, and ß by ss (Known as DIN 5007-2, used for phone books).(Known as DIN 5007-1, usually used for encyclopedias) Option one: the letter with diacritics is treated the same way as the one without, ä is treated as a, ö as o and ü as u.Note also, that there are different ways to sort numbers, and special characters, such as letters with diacritics. Different languages have different rules for sorting. Sorting things in English is done using the Roman alphabet. It became commonplace after the Renaissance. Some lists in alphabetical order were used during the early Roman Empire. It is done by following the standard (usual) order of letters in an alphabet. It helps a reader to find a name or a title in the list. Alphabetical order is a way to sort ( organize) a list.
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