[Beth Brooks]

Hi!

Using Word 2000, I'm trying to sort a 50+ page list of references
alphabetically by the name of the first author, then the second author, and
so on. Author names are separated by commas and a string of author names ends
with a period. The problem occurs when there is only a single author.

Given this list of references:

Writer BA, Author AN, Block W. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Author AN, Block W. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Author AN. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Block W, Writer BA, Author AN. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).

I expect the sort to result in this:

Author AN. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Author AN, Block W. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Block W, Writer BA, Author AN. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Writer BA, Author AN, Block W. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).

Instead, I get this (note the reverse order of the first two references):

Author AN, Block W. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Author AN. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Block W, Writer BA, Author AN. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).
Writer BA, Author AN, Block W. Title. Publication info. Date. Page(s).

The only info I've found came from an article about Excel sort order that
said that punctuation is sorted according the the ASCII character value
rather than English text rules.

In any case, can anyone suggest how I might be able to modify the Word sort
order so that I get the results I expect? This list of references is updated
frequently and moving the references around by hand introduces opportunites
for error I'd rather avoid.

Thanks!

Beth