Back on the 8th, Charlie Doyle posted plaintively to ADS-L about a puzzle in alphabetization:
Yesterday my daughter-in-law called me with a question about my third-grader grandson’s homework. The assignment was to alphabetize a list of words, and the list included the four items girl/girl’s/girls/girls’. (My daughter-in-law made clear than both the academic career of my grandson and the family’s standing in the community were at stake, since the parents of the other third-graders were also depending on my answer.)
I failed. I could tell her that there exist various styles of alphabetizing, that certain traditional “rules” obtain, one of which is “Ignore apostrophes” — but the rules I am aware of don’t fully address the case at hand. I could tell her that if the Microsoft Corporation is asked to “sort” the words alphabetically, they will appear in the order in which I have listed them above, which seems reasonable — but not, as far as I can determine, “authoritative.”
Any suggestions? (I don’t recall that third grade used to be this hard!)
Two issues here: one, why is the question being asked? and two, what’s the answer?
