What is alphabetical order?

The alphabet

There are 26 letters in the alphabet.

They are:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

Alphabetical order

We often sort letters and words in alphabetical order. This means to order them as they appear in the alphabet.

When sorting words in to alphabetical order, we look at the first letter of the word.

For example:

The word cat comes before the word dog.

That is because 'c' comes before 'd' in the alphabet.

If two words begin with the same first letter, we then look at the second letter to decide on the alphabetical order.

For example:

The word cat comes before the word country.

That's because 'a' comes before 'o' in the alphabet.

If a word has the same first two letters, we look at the third letter.

Watch: Putting words in alphabetical order

Activity 1

Practise putting words into alphabetical order with the activity below.

Activity 2

Take a look at the different lists of words below and re-write them, placing them in alphabetical order.

(i) Sunday, Tuesday, Saturday, Monday, Thursday, Wednesday

(ii) January, April, March, August, June, September

(iii) badger, bear, bobcat, bluebird, buffalo

(iv) pear, plumb, pineapple, pumpkin, papaya, pomegranate

(v) Andrew, Alice, Alexa, Ayesha, Addison, Ayden

Remember, when the first two letters are the same we look at the third letter to order alphabetically.