The discussion on http://www.egt.ie/standards/capsmall.html is not particularly convincing. Using outlines, pairs of letters written together (which would naturally follow titlecase convention), and history as evidence for collation order is a complete stretch. The only real evidence is provided by actual collation orders in practice.
There, different sources vary quite a bit. The Concise Oxford Dictionary is not the only authority -- the English language does not (thank the gods) depend on a centralized authority like the French Academy.
Mark
Markus Kuhn wrote:
> Michael Everson wrote on 2000-03-13 13:34 UTC:
> > http://www.egt.ie/standards/capsmall.html
>
> Sounds convincing. You might add that ASCII ordering also did it always
> that way.
>
> Does DIN 5007 come with any rationale for its aA sorting order? If not,
> then I suggest that like any standard without proper rationale, it shall
> be doomed to remain ignored. This would be a good lesson for the authors
> of future standards who think that adding rationales is not necessary.
> Even if you simply tossed a coin to make an arbitrary decision when
> writing a standard, at least say that this was your decision criterion.
> With standards being revised and replaced by others frequently these
> days, the design rationale has often more long-term importance than the
> actual standard itself.
>
> Markus
>
> --
> Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
> Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
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