Editing Alphabetical order (section)

{{Short description|System for ordering words, names and phrases}}
{{redirect2|Alphabetical|Alphabetization|other uses|Alphabetical (disambiguation)|the creation of an alphabetic writing system, which in instances of Latin script is called romanization|Romanization}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2017}}

[[File:Paris Summit for the Support to the Libyan People 01.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Flags of certain countries at the [[Élysée Palace]] in Paris for a peace conference regarding Libya, 2011. The national flags (other than that of the host, France) are arranged in French alphabetical order: ''Allemagne'', ''Belgique'', ''Canada'', ''Danemark'', ''Émirats Arabes Unis'', ''Espagne'', ''États-Unis'', ''Grèce'', ''Irak'', ''Italie'', ''Jordanie'', ''Maroc'', ''Norvège'', ''Pays-Bas'', ''Pologne'', ''Qatar'', ''Royaume-Uni''.]]
'''Alphabetical order''' is a system whereby [[character string]]s are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an [[alphabet]]. It is one of the methods of [[collation]]. In mathematics, a [[lexicographical order]] is the generalization of the alphabetical order to other data types, such as [[sequence (mathematics)|sequences]] of numbers or other ordered [[mathematical object]]s.

When applied to strings or [[sequence (mathematics)|sequences]] that may contain digits, numbers or more elaborate types of elements, in addition to alphabetical characters, the alphabetical order is generally called a [[lexicographical order]].

To determine which of two strings of characters comes first when arranging in alphabetical order, their first [[letter (alphabet)|letters]] are compared. If they differ, then the string whose first letter comes earlier in the alphabet comes before the other string. If the first letters are the same, then the second letters are compared, and so on. If a position is reached where one string has no more letters to compare while the other does, then the first (shorter) string is deemed to come first in alphabetical order.

[[Capital letter|Capital or upper case]] letters are generally considered to be identical to their corresponding lower case letters for the purposes of alphabetical ordering, although conventions may be adopted to handle situations where two strings differ only in capitalization. Various conventions also exist for the handling of strings containing [[space (symbol)|space]]s, modified letters, such as those with [[diacritic]]s, and non-letter characters such as marks of [[punctuation]].

The result of placing a set of words or strings in alphabetical order is that all of the strings beginning with the same letter are grouped together; within that grouping all words beginning with the same two-letter sequence are grouped together; and so on. The system thus tends to maximize the number of common initial letters between adjacent words.