On Thu, 6 Sep 2001, Ayers, Mike wrote:
>
> > From: David Starner [mailto:dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 01:40 PM
>
> > On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 04:03:07PM +0200, Thierry Sourbier wrote:
> > > The only little thing to know about French and diacritical
> > mark is that when
> > > doing a sort diacritical mark are evaluated from right to
> > left. (e.g.
> > > "cote" < "côte" < "coté" vs the English order "cote" <
> > "coté" < "côte" ).
> >
> > I'm not sure there is an established English sort order. It's not a
> > problem that comes up much in English.
>
> I believe that there is an established sort order in English, which
> is to sort without regard to diacritics, or else we'd never find the words!
> In English (American English more than British English), diacritics are
> considered optional, and it is common to see "naїve" written "naive", "San
> José" written "San Jose", etc. Especially amongst Americans, the two are
> considered equivalent, and I know of no word pair in all of English which is
> separated only by a diacritic.
>
Friday, September 7, 2001
Librarians have *filing* rules--the American Library Association (ALA) and
the Library of Congress (LC) each issued some in, I think, 1980. I
believe they both say to ignore diacritics because Americans do not
recognize that they have an order. These days filing in vendor software
for libraries tends to follow neither one very closely--the phrase
"more honored in the breach than the observance" comes to mind. I may be
wrong but I do not believe there is an established U.S. standard for
sorting/filing. A few years ago a National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) committee drafted one but it didn't get the
votes needed to become an accepted standard.
Regards,
Jim Agenbroad ( jage@LOC.gov )
The above are purely personal opinions, not necessarily the official
views of any government or any agency of any.
Phone: 202 707-9612; Fax: 202 707-0955; US mail: I.T.S. Dev.Gp.4, Library
of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, D.C. 20540-9334 U.S.A.
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