a place for everything the curious history of alphabetical order

'A charming repository of idiosyncrasy, a love letter to literacy that rightly delights in alphabetisation's exceptions as much as its rules.'- Financial Times For the mildly curious, it's accessible, narratively adventurous, and surprisingly insightful about how the alphabet marks us all in some way.A rich cultural and linguistic history.'- Kirkus 'For readers who love language or armchair historians interested in the evolution of linguistics, this is catnip. 'One of the many fascinations of Judith Flanders's book is that it reveals what a weird, unlikely creation the alphabet is.an intriguing history not just of alphabetical order but of the human need for both pattern and intellectual efficiency.'- Guardian is a meticulous historian with a taste for the offbeat the story of alphabetical order suits her well.'- Dan Jones, Sunday Times (UK) With abundant inquisitiveness and wry humor, historian Judith Flanders traces the triumph of alphabetical order and offers a compendium of Western knowledge, from A to Z. And yet, while the order of the alphabet now rules - libraries, phone books, reference books, even the order of entry for the teams at the Olympic Games - it has remained curiously invisible.

But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification - Yale listed its students by their family's social status until 1886. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling characters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. From a New York Times-bestselling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world.Ī Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia.

A place for everything the curious history of alphabetical order