Proposal For Filing Rules
File On What The Entry Says Not What It Means
I propose that the fundamental rule for filing text entries in the standard English 26-letter alphabet be 'file the entry on what it says, not on what it means'. This implies that the practice of filing 'Mc' as 'Mac' and 'St.' as 'Saint', etc, should be abandoned in favour of strict alphabetisation.
The justification for this is that the current selection of what terms to file out of order is based on historical precedent rather than any research or analysis. Where studies of index users have been done they show that users have enough trouble with ordinary alphabetisation; it is not reasonable to expect them to know about or be able to use arbitrary deviations from ordinary alphabetisation as well.
This proposal has nothing to say about filing numbers or non-Roman characters such as alpha and beta.
Jon Jermey jon@webindexing.biz