Alphabetizing Resources

Students may look at the alphabet as simply a way of memorizing the letters used in the English language. It is also, however, a sequence of letters in an widely accepted order. This makes the sequence useful for collation in what is called alphabetical order.
Collation is the process of assembling written information into a standard order. When the written information is a string of letters, it is logical to use the alphabet to sort them. The resulting sort is known as alphabetical order. Alphabetical order is most often based on the first letter of the character string. Strings starting with A will come first, followed by strings beginning with B. If there are no strings that begin with the next letter of the alphabet, it is skipped.
When two strings begin with the same letter, the second letter of the string is used to determine the order. Aardvark will come before abacus, for example. If the first and second letters are both the same, the third letter will be considered. This will go on until the letters differ and they strings can be sorted correctly.
If the string contains more than one word, students will have to be told which standard to use. There are two accepted methods: remove the spaces and sort as though they weren’t there, or use the spaces, sorting the space as before the letter “a”. Some high frequency words like “the” and “a” are ignored altogether when sorting if they come first.
Working with the resources provided by Education.com will allow your students to practice putting things in alphabetical order and may lead to a higher understanding of this method of collation.