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Original question:
<<How would you alphabetize these words:
key, individual
keypad
Key sequence
key, shared
I thought proper form is to ignore the space. But I see various resources
disagree: The Microsoft Style Guide puts "Key Sequences" before "keypad", my
dictionaries ignore the space, and I can't find anything on it in Strunk and
White or in the Techwr-L archives. >>
Techwr-L Answers:
-"Nothing comes before something", so put words with spaces first.
-Group all the phrases that begin with "key" as a separate word before words
that use "key" without a space. Then, use "key" as the main entry, and the
second word in each phrase as a subentry.
-You can alphabetize letter by letter or word by word. The latter pays
attention to spaces, the former does not. Either way is fine. (3 responses
said this)
-Put the "spaced" words before the ones without spaces
-do NOT ignore the space
-ignore the space
Hmm....John P., maybe we'll get a thread out of this anyway?!
Thanks to:
Bill, Rhea, Kay, Constance, Geoff, Penelope, JoFran, Dick, Kari, Niesa,
David, Kimber, Lindsey, Eric, Catheryn, and Alyssa.
