Precisely because alphabetical order is unnatural and arbitrary, it took a long time to be accepted. The foremost historian of alphabetization, Lloyd W. Daly . . . points to a work by Galen in the first century A.D. as the first example of alphabetization that did more than indiscriminately lump words together that start with the same letter. The next reference Daly finds is in the ninth century: Photius of Constantinople criticizing the work of a fifth-century grammarian for alphabetizing only according to the initial letters. . . . [I]n the nearly modern seventeenth century, Robert Cawdrey introduced his dictionary with yet another explanation of how alphabetization works: “Nowe if the word, which thou art desirous to finde, begin with (a) then looke in the beginning of this Table, but if with (v) looke towards the end. Againe, of they word beginne with (ca) looke in the beginning of the letter (c) but if with (cu) then looke toward the end of that letter,” and so on. It was a tough concept.
Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, pp. 26-7.
Posted by JAI 
