Alphabetical order rules for its, it's

[Denise L]

I am wondering if anyone has the rules for where apostrophes fall when you are alphabetizing words.

In particular,

its
it's

I thought it was it's first, since it is like "it is" and I thought that would come before its. But the teacher says its is first.

Just curious what the official rule is and what is says about how you treat an apostrophe.

 

[DebBrown]

I don't know if Microsoft is the authority but when I sorted these words with Excel, this is the order in which they appeared:

its
it's
who's
whose

Does that help?

Deb

 

[Denise L]

I don't know if Microsoft is the authority but when I sorted these words with Excel, this is the order in which they appeared:

its
it's
who's
whose

Does that help?

Deb

Thanks, Deb. I figured out what the correct order is, but I was curious as to how that rule was determined, or what the actual rule says.

 

[rickandcindy23]

Okay, so what are you asking?

 

[MULTIZ321]

Denise,

It's not a clear cut answer -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collation


Richard