People have been putting things in alphabetic order for about 3500 
years—because it’s useful. There are variations in the order of letters and 
what letters are included in English, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic etc but all known 
alphabets begin with A or equivalent. There were alphabets even before the 
phonetic alphabet.

Another interesting question is why keyboards were not arranged 
alphabetically—it goes back to the experience of telegraph operators and the 
mechanical difficulty of keys arranged alphabetically and thus the QWERTY 
keyboard was designed.

Donna Y
[email protected]


> On Dec 9, 2019, at 3:55 PM, 'Jim Russell' via General <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> 
> Why are so many things arraigned alphabetically, when there is absolutely no 
> intrinsic order to the letters of the alphabet? (Is there anything else that 
> needs a mumbled child's song to remember?)

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