Why 10 sorts before 9
Alphabetical sorting compares character by character, and 1 comes before 9. So item10 lands before item9, which is correct and never what anyone wanted.
Natural sorting reads runs of digits as numbers, putting item9 first. That is what you want for filenames, version strings and anything numbered by a human rather than a machine.
Case and accents
A plain sort puts every capital before every lower-case letter, because that is the order the character codes run in — so Zebra precedes apple. Case-insensitive sorting interleaves them the way a dictionary does.
Accented letters follow the locale. In most European languages é files with e; in Swedish ö is a distinct letter at the end of the alphabet. Sorting uses your browser’s locale rules rather than raw code points.
Frequently asked questions
Why does item10 come before item9?
Alphabetical order compares characters, and 1 precedes 9. Use natural sorting, which reads digit runs as numbers.
Why are capitals all at the top?
Character codes put every upper-case letter before every lower-case one. Switch to case-insensitive sorting for dictionary order.
Can I sort by length?
Yes — useful for finding the outliers in a list of keywords or headlines before anything else.
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