A place for everything, and everything that came before: the development of alphabetical order

Abstract

Indexers spend their lives immersed in alphabetical order, as do most people who work with words, be it using a library or running one’s eye along the electoral register or even a list of attendees at an indexing conference. To the modern mind, alphabetical order is synonymous with sorting. It is all too easy to forget that this has not always been the case. This article explores the historical developments before – and after – alphabetisation took control in the fourteenth century. Hierarchy, geography, subject – even caste and class – have all been used as long-term sorting systems, systems that to some, even as late as the nineteenth century, seemed superior. Technology has also promoted alphabetisation, with the development of printing in the fifteenth century, and the creation of encyclopedias in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also helped to promote alphabetical order to its pre-eminent position.