Note | The sort key is used to determine the sequence and grouping of entries in an index. It provides a sequence of characters which, when sorted with the other values, will produced the desired order; specifics of sort key construction are application-dependent Dictionary order often differs from the collation sequence of machine-readable character sets; in English-language dictionaries, an entry for 4-H will often appear alphabetized under ‘fourh’, and McCoy may be alphabetized under ‘maccoy’, while A1, A4, and A5 may all appear in numeric order ‘alphabetized’ between ‘a-’ and ‘AA’. The sort key is required if the orthography of the dictionary entry does not suffice to determine its location. |