The Alphabetical order reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Alphabetical order

An alphabet usually has a convential order of letters. Alphabetical order of words and phrases is based on this order in combination with the principle of lexicographical order.

A blank space is treated as a character that comes before the letters.

Conventions may vary where to position digits and special characters.

A common order is:

• blank space
• symbols
• digits
• letters

A more advanced system may consider numbers as such instead of just considering the digits; in that case 100 does not come between 10 and 11, but after 11. This can be extended to Roman numerals.

However, if a number is spelled out it is treated as a word.

For example:

• $2.99
• 2 dollars 99 cents
• 2.99
• two dollars 99 cents

Normally capitals and lowercase letters have the same position. On computer systems sometimes a crude system is used, e.g. based on ASCII order. In that case "a" comes after "Z", see e.g. [1].

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