While editing a book on WWII history, I prepared an index. Unfortunately,
the names of military units were sorted in character order (as Word states)
but this is of no value when constructing a book of this type, i.e., the
101st Airborne Division should be listed AFTER not before the 82nd Airborne
Division. The index sort order employed by Word makes preparing an index for
such a publication invalid.

Suggestion: provide some sort of "switch" that would indicate that the
numbers are to be treated as absolute numeric values when they are sorted
prior to placement in an index. Such a switch might understand the following
-
?101st Airborne Division
?82nd Airborne Division
treat the numbers as absolute values, sort them into the proper order, then
print the Index entries as
82nd Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division

Of course, the switch should be available for use at any level of the index
entry, for example, Airborne Division:?082nd Airborne Division:?101st.

Having such a facility available in Word would make it considerably easier
to use the product to produce text, historical, or other publications that
require numeric values to be in order by absolute value.





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