Editing Alphabetical order (section)

===Treatment of multiword strings===
When some of the strings being ordered consist of more than one word, i.e., they contain [[space (character)|spaces]] or other separators such as [[hyphen]]s, then two basic approaches may be taken. In the first approach, all strings are ordered initially according to their first word, as in the sequence:
*''Oak; Oak Hill; Oak Ridge; Oakley Park; Oakley River''
*:where all strings beginning with the separate word ''Oak'' precede all those beginning with ''Oakley'', because ''Oak'' precedes ''Oakley'' in alphabetical order.

In the second approach, strings are alphabetized as if they had no spaces or hyphens,{{efn|In MS Explorer's case, the space, the apostrophe (U+0027), and all of the hyphen-like characters (U+002D and U+2010 through U+2014, inclusive) are omitted from the primary sort key.}} giving the sequence:
*''Oak; Oak Hill; Oakley Park; Oakley River; Oak Ridge''
*:where ''Oak Ridge'' now comes after the ''Oakley'' strings, as it would if it were written "Oakridge".

The second approach is the one usually taken in dictionaries,{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} and it is thus often called ''[[dictionary order (disambiguation)|dictionary order]]'' by [[publishing|publishers]].{{efn|For instance, the ''Harrap's Shorter Dictionnaire Anglais-Français/ Français-Anglais'', ISBN 0-245-60660-2, page 640, has the ordering ''oil, oil-bearing, oilcan, oilcloth, oil-cooled, oiled ''[…]'' oiliness, oil lamp, oil paint, oil painting, oilpaper''.}} The first approach has often been used in [[index (publishing)|book indexes]], although each publisher traditionally set its own standards for which approach to use therein; there was no ISO standard for book indexes ([[ISO 999]]) before 1975.