Alphabetical Order

What is alphabetical order?

Alphabetical order is a way to organize lists of words. Words are arranged using the order of the letters in the alphabet. Lots of things are arranged in alphabetical order such as words in a dictionary, names in a telephone directory and articles in an encyclopedia. If you want to find a word in the dictionary or a name in the telephone directory, you need to know alphabetical order.

How is it done?

What if you had a the following list of words you needed to put in alphabetical order:

bat dog cat ant

Since “a” is the first letter of the alphabet, the word “ant” goes first on the list, followed by “bat” which starts with “b”, then “cat” which starts with “c” and then “dog” which starts with “d”. Your list in alphabetical order would look like this:

ant bat cat dog

What if two or more words begin with the same letter?

If two or more words begin with the same letter, then you need to look at the second letter and place them in the order that their second letter comes in the alphabet. Look at the list below:

ant about add act

Since all four words begin with “a” we look at the second letter of each word. The second letters are n, b, d and c. In the alphabet, “b” comes before “c”followed by “d”. “N” comes after “d” in the alphabet. Our list in alphabetical order would look like this:

about act add ant

Helpful hint: If the first two letters of two words are the same look at the third letter. If the first three letters of two words are the same, look at the fourth letter and so on.