Jared Spool wrote: > Oh, really? I've never seen an alphabetical bookstore > or library. ... > Again, unless you shopped in a record that didn't > have much a selection, I doubt this was true.
This is a little disingenuous. I think it's perfectly valid to describe alphabetical order within a genre or section as "rely[ing] on alphabetical order." If we insisted on ratcheting out to the next-larger context, it'd be possible to argue that no examples of purely alphabetical organization exist in the known universe. Phone books are organized by city first, not alphabet. Dictionaries are organized by language first, not alphabet. Even _alphabets_ aren't solely organized alphabetically. . . . One of the best reasons I know of to use an alphabetical organization is where egos are concerned--specifically to avoid the appearance of priority when listing names. In that case it's akin to random; the names have to be in _some_ order and it helps to cast the blame on the "natural order" of the alphabet. Incidently, literal randomness is a pretty good organization scheme in some contexts; notably survey questions where the order of answers tends to influence selection. But in most cases I'd say alphabetical is preferable to random (if nothing else exists) because people want things to make sense and they'll try to read meaning into the order no matter what you do. It's more humane to give them something obvious like alphabetical order to hang their hat on. // jeff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30259 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
