COMMON RULES FOR ADVANCED ALPHABETIZING

 General sequence of alphabetization is by

• symbol ($, %, ‡)
• numerals (0 through 9)
• letter  (A through Z)

Example:
$10 a day
20 Ways to Improve Your Spelling
A-1 Steak Sauce
All About Spelling
banana

 Abbreviations are usually alphabetized exactly as written, not as they are spelled out.

Example:
dog
Dr. Brown
FBI
milk
Mrs. Smith

 Numerals are usually alphabetized exactly as written, not as they are spelled out.

Example:
007 James Bond
101 short stories
3-D movies
3M Company
600 new churches
1984

 Names with Mac or Mc are alphabetized letter by letter as they appear.

Names with O’ are alphabetized as if the apostrophe were missing.

Example:
Macalister, Donald
MacAlister, Paul
Macauley, Catharine
Macmillan, Harold
Madison, James
marriage
McAllister, Ward
McAuley, Catherine
McMillan, Edwin M.
metal
Onassis, Aristotle
O’Neill, Eugene
ones

 Titles are usually alphabetized by the first main word, with initial articles (A, An, The) either put at
the end of the entry or left out entirely.

Example:
Around the World in 80 Days
Catcher in the Rye, The
Hound of the Baskervilles, The
New York Times
Tale of Two Cities, A

MERC Advanced Training Center | Civil Service Reviewer 1

 HOW TO ALPHABETIZE
1. 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.

2.
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.
4.
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.
5. 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 "Ñ" after the
English "N".

3.
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.

MERC Advanced Training Center | Civil Service Reviewer 2