Sort any list A–Z instantly. Remove duplicates, handle reference lists in APA and MLA style, and get results in seconds.
Letter-by-letter alphabetization. Arrange references by the first letter of the first significant word—which for most entries is the first author's last name. When a work has no author, alphabetize by the first significant word of the title, ignoring the initial a, an, or the.
Example: "The Smithsonian Institution" is alphabetized under S, not T. "An Analysis of Data" is alphabetized under A (Analysis), not A (An).
Letter-by-letter alphabetization. Arrange works-cited entries alphabetically by the first author's last name. When alphabetizing by title (for works with no author), ignore an initial a, an, or the, or the equivalent in other languages. The article remains in the entry—you ignore it only for sorting.
Example: The Hunger Games is alphabetized under H (Hunger), not T (The).
This tool uses Intl.Collator with numeric-aware alphabetization. This means "item 2" sorts before "item 10" (numeric order), not "item 10" before "item 2" (lexicographic order). Accented characters (é, ñ, ü) are sorted naturally according to your system's language settings.
Quickly alphabetize works-cited, references, or bibliography entries. Use "Works-Cited Mode" to ignore leading articles.
Sort key terms, definitions, and index entries. Switch to "Last word" mode to sort by surname.
Organize student names, team rosters, or contact lists. Strip numbering if your original list had 1., 2., 3. prefixes.
Alphabetize foreign-language vocabulary, thesaurus terms, or spelling lists without worrying about accents or case.
Paste a messy list, check "Remove duplicates," and get a clean, sorted, unique set.
Switch the output separator to comma or semicolon to format for spreadsheets or inline use.
A Brief History The Great Gatsby The Hunger Games Zero to One
A Brief History The Great Gatsby The Hunger Games Zero to One
In this example, both produce the same order. But try this list: "The Great Gatsby", "Pride and Prejudice", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Zero Hour". Without Works-Cited Mode, you get A, P, T, Z. With Works-Cited Mode, you get Great, Pride, Tale, Zero (G, P, T, Z)—quite different! Use Works-Cited Mode when alphabetizing reference lists and works-cited pages.
By default, this tool removes blank lines and trims whitespace from each item. If you want to keep blank lines (unlikely but possible), uncheck "Remove blank lines." Either way, leading and trailing whitespace is always stripped before sorting.
This tool uses the JavaScript Intl.Collator API with numeric: true. This means items like "Chapter 2" and "Chapter 10" are sorted numerically, not lexicographically (which would put "Chapter 10" before "Chapter 2"). Similarly, accented characters like é and ñ are sorted according to Unicode Collation Algorithm rules, not raw UTF-8 order.
After trimming whitespace and optionally ignoring case, any two items that are identical are counted as duplicates. The tool keeps the first occurrence and removes all subsequent ones. For example, if you have "apple", "Apple", and "apple" with "Ignore case" enabled, only the first "apple" is kept.
Yes. Choose "Last word" in the "Sort by" option. This is useful for name lists (e.g., "John Smith" sorts by Smith). The tool treats the last whitespace-separated token as the sort key.
This mode implements the APA 7 and MLA 9 rule: ignore an initial a, an, or the (case-insensitive) when alphabetizing. Use this when you're formatting a reference list or works-cited page. The articles remain in the output—they're just ignored during sorting. Useful for titles like "The Great Gatsby" or "An Analysis of…".