Alphabetizing
Q. I work in a bookstore. Usually keeping my section in perfect order is a lost cause, but when trying to alphabetize I sometimes have questions about special situations. First of all, would you put O’Shaughnessy before Omartian because it has an apostrophe, or would you pretend the apostrophe isn’t there for purposes of alphabetization? (I have been assuming that an apostrophe would count as a letter just before A in the alphabet.) I would also appreciate it if you could enlighten me as to whether there is an order for punctuation—if apostrophes come before hyphens and whatnot. In alphabetizing names that have abbreviations in them, should I treat author St. George as “Saint George” or “S-T-period-space-George”? It makes a big difference as to whether to put him in the STs or the SAs. Thank you for your attention.
A. The answers to your questions depend on whether you are using letter-by-letter alphabetization or word-by-word, and I’m afraid the two systems are a bit too complicated to type out here. But I’m sure your store has a copy of CMOS, so check out section 18.59, where the two systems are compared side by side. I’m wondering, though, whether there’s much point in your sticking rigorously to one system or other. It seems to me that whether you put “St.” in the SA or ST section, half of your browsers will probably look in one place first, and half in the other. In any case, you have my respect.
