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63-505: Before Alpha Beta was the name of a store, it was the name of a marketing concept used in grocery stores founded by Albert and Hugh Gerrard. It referred to organizing the groceries in the store in alphabetical order . The Gerrards applied this idea to their flagship grocery store, Triangle Grocerteria, in 1915. Then in 1917, they opened the first Alpha Beta store in Pomona , in eastern Los Angeles County, California . The company also launched

126-473: A , b , etc. This is sometimes called ASCIIbetical order . This deviates from the standard alphabetical order, particularly due to the ordering of capital letters before all lower-case ones (and possibly the treatment of spaces and other non-letter characters). It is therefore often applied with certain alterations, the most obvious being case conversion (often to uppercase, for historical reasons ) before comparison of ASCII values. In many collation algorithms,

189-409: A computer collation algorithm is complex, and simple attempts will fail. For example, unless the algorithm has at its disposal an extensive list of family names, there is no way to decide if "Gillian Lucille van der Waal" is "van der Waal, Gillian Lucille", "Waal, Gillian Lucille van der", or even "Lucille van der Waal, Gillian". Ordering by surname is frequently encountered in academic contexts. Within

252-553: A different order than modern ones. Furthermore, collation may depend on use. For example, German dictionaries and telephone directories use different approaches. Some Arabic dictionaries, such as Hans Wehr 's bilingual A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic , group and sort Arabic words by semitic root . For example, the words kitāba ( كتابة 'writing'), kitāb ( كتاب 'book'), kātib ( كاتب 'writer'), maktaba ( مكتبة 'library'), maktab ( مكتب 'office'), maktūb ( مكتوب 'fate,' or 'written'), are agglomerated under

315-582: A few cases, such as Arabic and Kiowa , the alphabet has been completely reordered. Alphabetization rules applied in various languages are listed below. Collation algorithms (in combination with sorting algorithms ) are used in computer programming to place strings in alphabetical order. A standard example is the Unicode Collation Algorithm , which can be used to put strings containing any Unicode symbols into (an extension of) alphabetical order. It can be made to conform to most of

378-403: A given range (useful again in the case of numerical data, and also with alphabetically ordered data when one may be sure of only the first few letters of the sought item or items). Strings representing numbers may be sorted based on the values of the numbers that they represent. For example, "−4", "2.5", "10", "89", "30,000". Pure application of this method may provide only a partial ordering on

441-460: A group words with the same first two letters are grouped together, and so on. Capital letters are typically treated as equivalent to their corresponding lowercase letters. (For alternative treatments in computerized systems, see Automated collation , below.) Certain limitations, complications, and special conventions may apply when alphabetical order is used: In several languages the rules have changed over time, and so older dictionaries may use

504-431: A means of labeling items that are already ordered. For example, pages, sections, chapters, and the like, as well as the items of lists, are frequently "numbered" in this way. Labeling series that may be used include ordinary Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, ...), Roman numerals (I, II, III, ... or i, ii, iii, ...), or letters (A, B, C, ... or a, b, c, ...). (An alternative method for indicating list items, without numbering them,

567-471: 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 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

630-773: A series of coffee shops named Alphy's (a knockoff of the more formal Alpha Beta name) with dozens around southern California. They were eventually sold; many became Denny's . The company was bought by American Stores in 1961. Skaggs Drug Centers bought American Stores in 1979 and assumed the American Stores name. Combined food and drug stores in Alpha Beta territory were re-branded as Skaggs Alpha Beta. In 1984, American Stores bought The Jewel Companies, Inc. , which had owned Osco Drug since 1961. In 1984, all 34 Alpha Beta stores in Arizona were sold to ABCO Foods , and

693-490: A single multi-author paper, ordering the authors alphabetically by surname, rather than by other methods such as reverse seniority or subjective degree of contribution to the paper, is seen as a way of "acknowledg[ing] similar contributions" or "avoid[ing] disharmony in collaborating groups". The practice in certain fields of ordering citations in bibliographies by the surnames of their authors has been found to create bias in favour of authors with surnames which appear earlier in

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756-481: A version of alphabetical order that can be achieved using a very simple algorithm , based purely on the ASCII or Unicode codes for characters. This may have non-standard effects such as placing all capital letters before lower-case ones. See ASCIIbetical order . A rhyming dictionary is based on sorting words in alphabetical order starting from the last to the first letter of the word. Collation Collation

819-449: Is r , which comes after e (the fourth letter of Aster ) in the alphabet. Those words themselves are ordered based on their sixth letters ( l , n and p respectively). Then comes At , which differs from the preceding words in the second letter ( t comes after s ). Ataman comes after At for the same reason that Aster came after As . Attack follows Ataman based on comparison of their third letters, and Baa comes after all of

882-417: Is a bit more difficult, because different locales use different symbols for a decimal point , and sometimes the same character used as a decimal point is also used as a separator, for example "Section 3.2.5". There is no universal answer for how to sort such strings; any rules are application dependent. In some contexts, numbers and letters are used not so much as a basis for establishing an ordering, but as

945-439: Is a convention in some official documents where people's names are listed without hierarchy. When information is stored in digital systems, collation may become an automated process. It is then necessary to implement an appropriate collation algorithm that allows the information to be sorted in a satisfactory manner for the application in question. Often the aim will be to achieve an alphabetical or numerical ordering that follows

1008-521: Is a system whereby character strings 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 sequences of numbers or other ordered mathematical objects . When applied to strings or sequences that may contain digits, numbers or more elaborate types of elements, in addition to alphabetical characters,

1071-405: Is absent from the list. In automatic systems this can be done using a binary search algorithm or interpolation search ; manual searching may be performed using a roughly similar procedure, though this will often be done unconsciously. Other advantages are that one can easily find the first or last elements on the list (most likely to be useful in the case of numerically sorted data), or elements in

1134-514: Is desired to order text with embedded numbers using proper numerical order. For example, "Figure 7b" goes before "Figure 11a", even though '7' comes after '1' in Unicode . This can be extended to Roman numerals . This behavior is not particularly difficult to produce as long as only integers are to be sorted, although it can slow down sorting significantly. For example, Microsoft Windows does this when sorting file names . Sorting decimals properly

1197-510: Is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation. For example, the Chinese character 妈 (meaning "mother") is sorted as a six-stroke character under the three-stroke primary radical 女. The radical-and-stroke system is cumbersome compared to an alphabetical system in which there are a few characters, all unambiguous. The choice of which components of a logograph comprise separate radicals and which radical

1260-582: Is primary is not clear-cut. As a result, logographic languages often supplement radical-and-stroke ordering with alphabetic sorting of a phonetic conversion of the logographs. For example, the kanji word Tōkyō (東京) can be sorted as if it were spelled out in the Japanese characters of the hiragana syllabary as "to-u-ki- yo -u" (とうきょう), using the conventional sorting order for these characters. In addition, Chinese characters can also be sorted by stroke-based sorting . In Greater China, surname stroke ordering

1323-781: Is the Unicode Collation Algorithm . This can be adapted to use the appropriate collation sequence for a given language by tailoring its default collation table. Several such tailorings are collected in Common Locale Data Repository . In some applications, the strings by which items are collated may differ from the identifiers that are displayed. For example, The Shining might be sorted as Shining, The (see Alphabetical order above), but it may still be desired to display it as The Shining . In this case two sets of strings can be stored, one for display purposes, and another for collation purposes. Strings used for collation in this way are called sort keys . Sometimes, it

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1386-415: Is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order , or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office filing systems , library catalogs , and reference books . Collation differs from classification in that the classes themselves are not necessarily ordered. However, even if

1449-502: Is thought to have created the world's first library catalog , known as the Pinakes , with scrolls shelved in alphabetical order of the first letter of authors' names. In the 1st century BC, Roman writer Varro compiled alphabetic lists of authors and titles. In the 2nd century CE, Sextus Pompeius Festus wrote an encyclopedic epitome of the works of Verrius Flaccus , De verborum significatu , with entries in alphabetic order. In

1512-462: Is to use a bulleted list .) When letters of an alphabet are used for this purpose of enumeration , there are certain language-specific conventions as to which letters are used. For example, the Russian letters Ъ and Ь (which in writing are only used for modifying the preceding consonant ), and usually also Ы , Й , and Ё , are omitted. Also in many languages that use extended Latin script ,

1575-655: The Alphabetical order article. Such algorithms are potentially quite complex, possibly requiring several passes through the text. Problems are nonetheless still common when the algorithm has to encompass more than one language. For example, in German dictionaries the word ökonomisch comes between offenbar and olfaktorisch , while Turkish dictionaries treat o and ö as different letters, placing oyun before öbür . A standard algorithm for collating any collection of strings composed of any standard Unicode symbols

1638-425: The Unicode collation algorithm defines an order through the process of comparing two given character strings and deciding which should come before the other. When an order has been defined in this way, a sorting algorithm can be used to put a list of any number of items into that order. The main advantage of collation is that it makes it fast and easy for a user to find an element in the list, or to confirm that it

1701-561: The triliteral root k - t - b ( ك ت ب ), which denotes 'writing'. Another form of collation is radical-and-stroke sorting , used for non-alphabetic writing systems such as the hanzi of Chinese and the kanji of Japanese , whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by convention. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals in Chinese and logographic systems derived from Chinese. Characters are then grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. When there

1764-525: The 3rd century CE, Harpocration wrote a Homeric lexicon alphabetized by all letters. The 10th century saw major alphabetical lexicons of Greek (the Suda ), Arabic ( Ibn Faris 's al-Mujmal fī al-Lugha ), and Biblical Hebrew ( Menahem ben Saruq 's Mahberet ). Alphabetical order as an aid to consultation flourished in 11th-century Italy, which contributed works on Latin ( Papias 's Elementarium ) and Talmudic Aramaic ( Nathan ben Jehiel 's Arukh ). In

1827-641: The 7th–6th centuries BCE. In the Book of Jeremiah , the prophet utilizes the Atbash substitution cipher , based on alphabetical order. Similarly, biblical authors used acrostics based on the (ordered) Hebrew alphabet . The first effective use of alphabetical order as a cataloging device among scholars may have been in ancient Alexandria, in the Great Library of Alexandria , which was founded around 300 BCE. The poet and scholar Callimachus , who worked there,

1890-677: The Danish king Christian IX comes after his predecessor Christian VIII . Languages which use an extended Latin alphabet generally have their own conventions for treatment of the extra letters. Also in some languages certain digraphs are treated as single letters for collation purposes. For example, the Spanish alphabet treats ñ as a basic letter following n , and formerly treated the digraphs ch and ll as basic letters following c and l , respectively. Now ch and ll are alphabetized as two-letter combinations. The new alphabetization rule

1953-730: The Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas stores. In 1994, Yucaipa Companies , then owner of the Alpha Beta chain in southern California, purchased the Ralphs Grocery Company . All existing Alpha Beta stores in Southern California were rebranded as Ralphs or Food 4 Less , and the Alpha Beta name ceased to be used by September 1995. Alpha Beta stores in Northern California and San Diego County were taken over and rebranded by Lucky Stores , which in turn

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2016-428: The alphabet comes first in alphabetical order. If the first letters are the same, then the second letters are compared, and so on, until the order is decided. (If one string runs out of letters to compare, then it is deemed to come first; for example, "cart" comes before "carthorse".) The result of arranging a set of strings in alphabetical order is that words with the same first letter are grouped together, and within such

2079-421: The alphabet, while this effect does not appear in fields in which bibliographies are ordered chronologically. If a phrase begins with a very common word (such as "the", "a" or "an", called articles in grammar), that word is sometimes ignored or moved to the end of the phrase, but this is not always the case. For example, the book " The Shining " might be treated as "Shining", or "Shining, The" and therefore before

2142-404: 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 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

2205-407: The basic principles of alphabetical ordering (mathematically speaking, lexicographical ordering ). So a computer program might treat the characters a , b , C , d , and $ as being ordered $ , C , a , b , d (the corresponding ASCII codes are $ = 36, a = 97, b = 98, C = 67, and d = 100). Therefore, strings beginning with C , M , or Z would be sorted before strings with lower-case

2268-602: The book title " Summer of Sam ". However, it may also be treated as simply "The Shining" and after "Summer of Sam". Similarly, " A Wrinkle in Time " might be treated as "Wrinkle in Time", "Wrinkle in Time, A", or "A Wrinkle in Time". All three alphabetization methods are fairly easy to create by algorithm, but many programs rely on simple lexicographic ordering instead. The prefixes M and Mc in Irish and Scottish surnames are abbreviations for Mac and are sometimes alphabetized as if

2331-483: The chain used various slogans such as "You Can't Lose" and "The Savings Don't Stop", every commercial featuring Hamel ended with him saying to the audience "tell a friend". Popeye was in the Alpha Beta grocery store commercial with Mickey Mouse in the 80s featuring the end of the Alpha Beta commercial with Mickey Mouse saying next to Popeye to the audience "tell a friend". Olive Oyl 's voiceover ended up saying "Go shopping with Popeye at Alpha Beta" and "Tell A Friend" at

2394-564: The comparison is based not on the numerical codes of the characters, but with reference to the collating sequence – a sequence in which the characters are assumed to come for the purpose of collation – as well as other ordering rules appropriate to the given application. This can serve to apply the correct conventions used for alphabetical ordering in the language in question, dealing properly with differently cased letters, modified letters , digraphs , particular abbreviations, and so on, as mentioned above under Alphabetical order , and in detail in

2457-595: The end of the Alpha Beta commercial in the 80s. Bugs Bunny , Donald Duck , and Hulk Hogan were in the commercial of Alpha Beta grocery store in the 90s featuring Hulk Hogan ended up saying "Either you're at Alpha Beta or you're not" next to Bugs Bunny. In the 90s, Looney Tunes were in the commercial of Alpha Beta grocery store commercial and Daffy Duck ended up saying "Join Looney Tunes at Alpha Beta", "Either you're at Alpha Beta or you're not", and "Tell A Friend". Alphabetical order Alphabetical order

2520-412: The first monolingual English dictionary , "Nowe if the word, which thou art desirous to finde, begin with (a) then looke in the beginning of this Table, but if with (v) looke towards the end". Although as late as 1803 Samuel Taylor Coleridge condemned encyclopedias with "an arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters", many lists are today based on this principle. The standard order of

2583-447: The handling of strings containing spaces , modified letters, such as those with diacritics , 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

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2646-500: The language-specific conventions described above by tailoring its default collation table. Several such tailorings are collected in Common Locale Data Repository . The principle behind alphabetical ordering can still be applied in languages that do not strictly speaking use an alphabet – for example, they may be written using a syllabary or abugida – provided the symbols used have an established ordering. For logographic writing systems, such as Chinese hanzi or Japanese kanji ,

2709-411: The letters of the alphabet. Another method is for numbers to be sorted alphabetically as they would be spelled: for example 1776 would be sorted as if spelled out "seventeen seventy-six", and 24 heures du Mans as if spelled "vingt-quatre..." (French for "twenty-four"). When numerals or other symbols are used as special graphical forms of letters, as 1337 for leet or the movie Seven (which

2772-509: The letters were separate—"æther" and "aether" would be ordered the same relative to all other words. This is true even when the ligature is not purely stylistic, such as in loanwords and brand names. Special rules may need to be adopted to sort strings which vary only by whether two letters are joined by a ligature. When some of the strings contain numerals (or other non-letter characters), various approaches are possible. Sometimes such characters are treated as if they came before or after all

2835-463: The method of radical-and-stroke sorting is frequently used as a way of defining an ordering on the symbols. Japanese sometimes uses pronunciation order, most commonly with the Gojūon order but sometimes with the older Iroha ordering. In mathematics, lexicographical order is a means of ordering sequences in a manner analogous to that used to produce alphabetical order. Some computer applications use

2898-399: The modern ISO basic Latin alphabet is: An example of straightforward alphabetical ordering follows: Another example: The above words are ordered alphabetically. As comes before Aster because they begin with the same two letters and As has no more letters after that whereas Aster does. The next three words come after Aster because their fourth letter (the first one that differs)

2961-469: The number of common initial letters between adjacent words. Alphabetical order was first used in the 1st millennium BCE by Northwest Semitic scribes using the abjad system. However, a range of other methods of classifying and ordering material, including geographical, chronological , hierarchical and by category , were preferred over alphabetical order for centuries. Parts of the Bible are dated to

3024-476: The order of the classes is irrelevant, the identifiers of the classes may be members of an ordered set, allowing a sorting algorithm to arrange the items by class. Formally speaking, a collation method typically defines a total order on a set of possible identifiers, called sort keys, which consequently produces a total preorder on the set of items of information (items with the same identifier are not placed in any defined order). A collation algorithm such as

3087-422: The others because it has a different first letter. When some of the strings being ordered consist of more than one word, i.e., they contain spaces or other separators such as hyphens , 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: In the second approach, strings are alphabetized as if they had no spaces, giving

3150-693: The same as the base letter for alphabetical ordering purposes. For example, rôle comes between rock and rose , as if it were written role . However, languages that use such letters systematically generally have their own ordering rules. See § Language-specific conventions below. In most cultures where family names are written after given names , it is still desired to sort lists of names (as in telephone directories) by family name first. In this case, names need to be reordered to be sorted correctly. For example, Juan Hernandes and Brian O'Leary should be sorted as "Hernandes, Juan" and "O'Leary, Brian" even if they are not written this way. Capturing this rule in

3213-589: The second half of the 12th century, Christian preachers adopted alphabetical tools to analyse biblical vocabulary. This led to the compilation of alphabetical concordances of the Bible by the Dominican friars in Paris in the 13th century, under Hugh of Saint Cher . Older reference works such as St. Jerome 's Interpretations of Hebrew Names were alphabetized for ease of consultation. The use of alphabetical order

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3276-441: The sequence: The second approach is the one usually taken in dictionaries , and it is thus often called dictionary order by publishers . The first approach has often been used in 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. In French, modified letters (such as those with diacritics ) are treated

3339-457: The spelling is Mac in full. Thus McKinley might be listed before Mackintosh (as it would be if it had been spelled out as "MacKinley"). Since the advent of computer-sorted lists, this type of alphabetization is less frequently encountered, though it is still used in British telephone directories. The prefix St or St. is an abbreviation of "Saint", and is traditionally alphabetized as if

3402-518: The spelling is Saint in full. Thus in a gazetteer St John's might be listed before Salem (as if it would be if it had been spelled out as "Saint John's"). Since the advent of computer-sorted lists, this type of alphabetization is less frequently encountered, though it is still sometimes used. Ligatures (two or more letters merged into one symbol) which are not considered distinct letters, such as Æ and Œ in English, are typically collated as if

3465-441: The standard criteria as described in the preceding sections. However, not all of these criteria are easy to automate. The simplest kind of automated collation is based on the numerical codes of the symbols in a character set , such as ASCII coding (or any of its supersets such as Unicode ), with the symbols being ordered in increasing numerical order of their codes, and this ordering being extended to strings in accordance with

3528-644: The stores continued operating under the Alpha Beta name. In Tucson , Alpha Beta-branded stores changed to ABCO-branded stores around 1989. Some Alpha Beta stores carried more than the customary supermarket merchandise. For example, in 1980, a Cupertino, California , Alpha Beta store sold Bohsei color TVs for under $ 200 (~$ 740.00 in 2023), Atari 400 and 800 computers, and other goods. In September 1991, Skaggs-Alpha Beta re-branded its 76 stores in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arkansas as Jewel-Osco, in an attempt to unify some of its subsidiaries under one nationally recognized name. Months later, Albertsons bought some of

3591-498: The strings relies on the existence of a standard ordering for the letters of the alphabet in question. (The system is not limited to alphabets in the strict technical sense; languages that use a syllabary or abugida , for example Cherokee , can use the same ordering principle provided there is a set ordering for the symbols used.) To decide which of two strings comes first in alphabetical order, initially their first letters are compared. The string whose first letter appears earlier in

3654-492: The strings, since different strings can represent the same number (as with "2" and "2.0" or, when scientific notation is used, "2e3" and "2000"). A similar approach may be taken with strings representing dates or other items that can be ordered chronologically or in some other natural fashion. Alphabetical order is the basis for many systems of collation where items of information are identified by strings consisting principally of letters from an alphabet . The ordering of

3717-543: Was acquired by Albertsons, triggering another rebranding. Many of the Northern California stores were subsequently sold in 2006 to Save Mart Supermarkets , which had acquired the rights to use the Lucky brand and logo from Albertsons, so many of the stores eventually were rebranded as Lucky. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Alan Hamel was the television spokesman for the Alpha Beta grocery stores in California. Although

3780-436: Was initially resisted by scholars, who expected their students to master their area of study according to its own rational structures; its success was driven by such tools as Robert Kilwardby 's index to the works of St. Augustine , which helped readers access the full original text instead of depending on the compilations of excerpts which had become prominent in 12th century scholasticism . The adoption of alphabetical order

3843-476: Was issued by the Royal Spanish Academy in 1994. These digraphs were still formally designated as letters but they are no longer so since 2010. On the other hand, the digraph rr follows rqu as expected (and did so even before the 1994 alphabetization rule), while vowels with acute accents ( á, é, í, ó, ú ) have always been ordered in parallel with their base letters, as has the letter ü . In

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3906-532: Was part of the transition from the primacy of memory to that of written works. The idea of ordering information by the order of the alphabet also met resistance from the compilers of encyclopaedias in the 12th and 13th centuries, who were all devout churchmen. They preferred to organise their material theologically – in the order of God's creation, starting with Deus (meaning God). In 1604 Robert Cawdrey had to explain in Table Alphabeticall ,

3969-509: Was stylised as Se7en ), they may be sorted as if they were those letters. Natural sort order orders strings alphabetically, except that multi-digit numbers are treated as a single character and ordered by the value of the number encoded by the digits. In the case of monarchs and popes , although their numbers are in Roman numerals and resemble letters, they are normally arranged in numerical order: so, for example, even though V comes after I,

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