Most of us learn the alphabet at kindergarten, singing our way from 'A for apple' through to 'Z for zebra' without ever stopping to wonder why the letters are arranged in that particular sequence. Yet ...

My husband rolled over in bed the other morning. “I was dreaming about the periodic table. I wonder if the alphabet is in the right order.” (Sometimes I feel like Ms. Frizzle, without her Magic School ...

Throughout history, alphabetical order has acted as an unsung agent of democratization, providing an organizational framework based not on social hierarchies, but an easily memorized string of letters ...