alphabetize

Alphabetize is the act of arranging items in alphabetical order according to the letters of a language’s alphabet. It is a common method for organizing lists, catalogs, indexes, bibliographies, and search results to improve readability and retrieval.

Sorting rules vary by language and context. In simple implementations, items are compared lexicographically by their letters, typically ignoring case. Many applications also apply locale-aware collation to handle case differences, diacritics, ligatures, and language-specific letter sequences.

Common conventions include treating articles at the beginning of titles as invisible for ordering (for example, “The” is often ignored), and deciding how to handle punctuation, spaces, and numbers. Some systems place numerals before letters, others after; diacritics may be considered equal to base letters in some rules and distinct in others.

In computing, alphabetization is performed by sorting algorithms that compare strings. Stable sorts preserve the original order of equal items, which matters when multiple fields are present. Standards such as Unicode collation provide cross-language guidelines for how characters should be ordered.

Origin and usage: the term “alphabetize” combines “alphabet” with the suffix “-ize” to describe the action of arranging items by alphabetical order. Alphabetization underpins organizing practices in libraries, databases, indexes, and many everyday lists.