Q. I am alphabetizing book titles in our elementary resource library. Would the title In the Days of Missions and Ranchos be filed under I for In or D for Days? I think it should be I but our district office said D.
A. If the folks in the district office have a system that they follow for the sake of consistency and they say to file such a title under D, file it under D and note for future reference that prepositions at the beginning of titles are ignored in alphabetizing. If there is no district-wide set of rules for alphabetizing and you wish to follow Chicago, alphabetize your book under I (after running it by the district office). Please see CMOS 16.53: “Unlike articles, prepositions beginning a title always remain in their original position and are never dropped, whether in English or non-English titles—nor are they ignored in alphabetizing.”
Q. I’m alphabetizing a list of schools for a journal of children’s prose and poetry. Do I alpha-order a school with The as the first word under T, or do I use the first significant word? E.g., The Hun School: T or H?
A. You can do it either way, but in many cases, alphabetizing under The isn’t very helpful. Often a reader might not even know whether a name starts with The.
Q. Hello! I’m alphabetizing a word-by-word bibliography and have come across these names: Rosenthal, Rosen-Zvi. Which should come first? Chicago seems to be silent as to how the hyphen should be considered. Is there a rule I should follow in this case?
A. Hyphens are ignored in word-by-word alphabetizing, so Rosenthal is first. Please see CMOS 16.60 and 16.61.
Q. What is the protocol for alphabetizing a band name that includes a proper name? For example, Dave Matthews Band, or Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade? In both cases, the name is of someone in the band. Is the protocol different if the proper name is of someone not in the band?
A. The name of a band is like the name of a company, so begin with the first letter of the first word (aside from articles like The). When alphabetizing, try to think like someone who is going to be using the list. Basing alphabetization on something like whether a name belongs to someone in the band would not be helpful. First, a reader would never guess that you were using that organizing principle, and second, even if you noted it at the top of the list, a reader might not know which names belong to band members.
Q. Please help me alphabetize Villa Grove and Village. (My son and I have a disagreement on this.)
A. You can’t go wrong. If you use word-by-word alphabetizing, Villa Grove comes first. If you use letter-by-letter alphabetizing, Village comes first. Please read CMOS 16.58–61 to understand these methods.
Q. I have a disagreement with a coworker about how to alphabetize street names with foreign words in them. I live in San Diego, so there are a lot of Spanish street names. I, for example, would file Via Hacienda under V. She argues that because Via means “street,” it should be under H instead. She reasons that if it were House Street, we would file it under H. My argument is that since we are not speaking Spanish, we should follow standard English alphabetizing rules.
A. You are right; there could be any number of non-English terms among the street names in San Diego, and unless all readers knew all the languages, the list would be useless. You can see that the city government of San Francisco puts Via Bufano under V. Another solution is to list such names in both locations, or to put in blind entries:
Via Hacienda. See Hacienda, Via
or
Hacienda, Via. See Via Hacienda
Q. In letter-by-letter alphabetization, is it correct to assume that articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are not alphabetized? E.g., would Albert the Great precede Albert of Saxony?
A. Every letter is taken into account in letter-by-letter alphabetizing. Please see the examples at CMOS 16.61, e.g.,
newsletter
News of the World (Queen)
news release
Q. In alphabetizing a list of donors that includes both foundations and individuals, is there a rule? The foundation would typically be ordered by the first word, but names by the last word. What do you do when they are combined in the same list?
A. Follow the same rules: alphabetize an organization under the first significant word, and an individual donor by surname. The Merry Gregg Foundation goes under M; Merry Gregg goes under G.
Q. If a person has two last names, but they are not hyphenated, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, how do you alphabetize them—by Beecher or Stowe? Beecher is not her middle name. It is her maiden name.
A. In the absence of a hyphen, alphabetize by the final name. Since it’s usually not possible to know for certain the origin of the name in the middle, it is treated as a middle name (not a surname) by default. Not observing this simple rule would lead to chaos: Chantelle Rutherford Smith would be listed in some directories under Rutherford and others under Smith, even if Rutherford is a middle name she was given at birth. (Note that Spanish names have their own rules; please see CMOS 16.84.)
Q. We are starting to include indexes in the books we publish here at my office. In CMOS 16.65, you say that “If many numerals occur in an index, they may be listed together in numerical order at the beginning of the index, before the As.” We include large letters at the beginning of each new section: A before the entries beginning with the letter A, etc. If we include a section of numbers before the letters, what would that section heading be? 0–9? Numbers? It looks odd not having any title.
A. If A, B, C headings don’t work well with the content of a given index, they should be eliminated. Design serves the text, and thereby the reader. The text should not be forced into a design that doesn’t work well.