Alphabetical culture clash.

HijackYourLife18 November 2009 · 01:50

Hallo everyone. I have an interesting question.

I am designing a photo book with lots of photographers contributions from different countries. It is a dutch publisher, but the book is in english only.

One section contains one contribution per photographer, and it is in alphabetical order according to the names of the photographer.

There are a few of them which have last names starting with W, and one of them is Wåhlstrand.

My dutch colleauges sorted it as if the å was an a, but the photographer is swedish, and å comes almost lasst in the swedish alpahabet. While it is not in the dutch and english alphabets at all.

So my qusetion is, should I treat it as an å or an a? The book is in english, the photographer is swedish, the publisher is dutch. How do I treat an å in english alphabetica order?

Claus Eggers Sø...18 November 2009 · 03:25

Hi Kalle
If you scroll down to 1.2.2 here http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/ you can find the alphabets of the euro languages in their native alphabetical order. Since the book is in English, then the order should be in the English alphabetical order: http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/english.pdf

cheers
Claus

HijackYourLife18 November 2009 · 03:57

Aha, it's nice that there actually are rules for everything. Thanks a lot Mr. Eggers.

Claus Eggers Sø...18 November 2009 · 05:12

Yes isn't it nice. You will have to Google how to properly deal with the alphabetical order of non-English characters in English.

Theunis de Jong18 November 2009 · 05:32

As this book is targeted at an international audience, rather than Swedish, one would use "international" sorting. That comes down to simply ignoring all accents, treating å and ø as a and o, respectively.

I'm unsure about æ: "a" or "ae"?

Riccardo Sartori18 November 2009 · 07:14

I’m unsure about æ: “a” or “ae”?
ae

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