Lists copied from documents often start with bullets or symbols that throw off a plain sort.
Alphabetical Order Sorter can ignore leading symbols so entries sort by their first real letter.
How to use Alphabetical Order Sorter
- Paste the lines you want sorted, bullets and all, into the input box.
- Enable ignore-leading-symbols if needed, and Alphabetical Order Sorter orders by the first letter or number.
- Copy the sorted list, or download it as a .txt file.
Use cases
- Sorting a bulleted list where markers precede each item.
- Ordering entries that begin with quotes or brackets.
- Alphabetising a list while ignoring leading punctuation.
Good to know
Alphabetical Order Sorter compares lines with locale-aware ordering and, when the option is on, skips any leading non-letter, non-number characters so a bullet or quote does not push an item to the top. It can also remove duplicates.
Frequently asked questions
Why would I ignore leading symbols?
Leading bullets or quotes otherwise sort before letters, so ignoring them orders items by their first meaningful character.
Does it remove duplicate entries?
Yes. The dedupe option drops repeated lines so each entry appears once in the sorted result.
Are numbers at the start handled?
Leading digits are treated as meaningful unless they are skipped along with symbols, depending on the option you choose.