Alphabetical order facts for kids

Alphabetical order is a way to sort or organize a list of things. It helps you quickly find a name, a word, or a title in a big list. You do it by following the usual order of letters in an alphabet. People have used simple forms of alphabetical order since the early Roman Empire. It became much more common after the Renaissance, a time of great learning and art.

When you sort things in English, you use the Roman alphabet. Different languages might have their own special rules for sorting.

How to Sort in English

Sorting items in English is usually done by looking at the very first letter of each word.

Sorting by the First Letter

Imagine you have a list of names: Eric, Lydia, Andrea, and Bob. To put them in alphabetical order, you look at their first letters:

• Andrea (A comes first)
• Bob (B comes after A)
• Eric (E comes after B)
• Lydia (L comes after E)

Sorting by Other Letters

If many words start with the same letter, you then look at their second letters to sort them. For example, if you have:

• Larry
• Leonard
• Linda
• Lydia

Here, 'a' comes before 'e', 'e' before 'i', and 'i' before 'y'.

If the second letters are also the same, you keep going to the third letter, then the fourth, and so on. You continue this process until the whole list is perfectly sorted.

Ignoring Small Words and Punctuation

When sorting, small words like a, an, and the are usually ignored. Sometimes, they are moved to the end of the title, after a comma. Spaces and hyphens ( - ) are also ignored.

Let's look at some examples:

• A Long Day's Journey Into Night
• The Long Goodbye
• Longhand: A Writer's Notebook
• The Long Road Home
• Long Voyage Back
• The Long Walk

When sorted, ignoring "A" or "The" at the start, they look like this:

• Long Day's Journey Into Night, A
• Long Goodbye, The
• Longhand: A Writer's Notebook
• Long Road Home, The
• Long Voyage Back
• Long Walk, The

Sorting Names of People

When you sort names of people, they are usually ordered by their Family name (last name), not their given name (first name).

For example:

• Gene Hackman
• Tom Hanks
• Katharine Hepburn
• Jennifer Love Hewitt

Often, these names are written with the last name first, followed by the first name:

• Hackman, Gene
• Hanks, Tom
• Hepburn, Katharine
• Hewitt, Jennifer Love

Sorting Numbers in Lists

Numbers can be sorted in two main ways.

Numbers by Value

The most common way is to list them from the smallest to the largest. This is how you usually sort numbers.

• 1
• 3
• 9
• 18
• 27
• 81

Numbers by Word

Sometimes, especially in titles, numbers are sorted as if they were spelled-out words. You treat them like any other word in the alphabet.

• Eighteen (E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N)
• Eighty-one (E-I-G-H-T-Y-O-N-E)
• Nine (N-I-N-E)
• One (O-N-E)
• Three (T-H-R-E-E)
• Twenty-seven (T-W-E-N-T-Y-S-E-V-E-N)

See Also

In Spanish: Orden alfabético para niños