Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
New York : Basic Books, 2020.
Description
Few of us think much of the alphabet and its familiar sing-song order once we've learned it as children. And yet the order of the alphabet, that simple knowledge that we take for granted, plays far more of a role in our lives than we usually consider. From the school register to the telephone book, from dictionaries and encyclopaedias to the library shelves, our lives are ordered from A to Z. This magical system of organization not only guides us to the correct bus route or train schedule or the jar of coriander seeds between the cinnamon and the cumin in the supermarket, but it also, in the library or the bookshop, gives us the ability to sift through centuries of thought and writing, of knowledge and literature. Alphabetical order allows us to sort, to file and to find the information we have, and to locate the information we need. In this entirely original new book, Judith Flanders draws our attention both to the neglected ubiquity of the alphabet and the long and complex history of its rise to prominence.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member DavidWineberg
The latest shibboleth of western imperialism to come under the magnifying glass is the alphabet. We in the West think of it as standard and intuitive, its powers innate, and its services universal. Judith Flanders is here to remind us it has a long tortured history to get to this hallowed status.
In the beginning, there was no need for alphabetizing anything, or even for an alphabet. There was not much knowledge to impart, no overwhelming commerce to track, no need for government processes. As time went on and history stacked up, oral stories became too big to handle. No one could carry everything just in their heads.
Different societies dealt with it in different ways. Writing developed, but mostly just in religious quarters, where the stories and their interpretations were the lifeblood. Most of the book seems to dwell on monks and priests, as they made all the discoveries and innovations. They formed the vast majority of those who could even read at all until 500 years ago. Even the scientists were monks and ministers.
Knowledge grew to the point where it needed to be classified in order to be retrievable. Everyone had their own ideas of how to achieve this. For example, the Book of Interpretation of Hebrew Names listed them in the order they appeared in the bible. Concordances, attempts to index everything in the bible for faster research, were a major source for innovations, through trial and error and fashion.
Should a phrase be tagged by its first word (I, The, An, One -for example) or by the central noun or verb? For a very long time, things were classified by their category in a hierarchy, from the top down. Books were written with heavenly hierarchy as their organizing spine. It always began with God, followed by angels, the king, lords, patrons, and so on down the line. Finding what you actually came for was, shall we say, challenging.
In his The Analytical Language of John Wilkins (a 17th century writer), Jorge Luis Borges cited a (probably imaginary)Chinese encyclopedia which classified all animals in the following categories: “a) those that belong to the Emperor, b) embalmed ones, c) those that are trained, d) suckling pigs, e) mermaids, f) fabulous ones, g) stray dogs, h) those that are included in this classification, i) those that tremble as if they were mad, j) innumerable ones, k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, l) others, m) those that have just broken a flower vase, n) those that resemble flies from a distance.” Absurd, but very close to the truth, as Flanders repeatedly discovered in her research. Consistency, let alone science, had yet to leave their marks.
As alphabets developed, some writers used them as their basis of organization, but it was centuries before it became common and acceptable, let alone mandatory. For one thing, the lack of people able to read or write meant that spelling was up to the writer. There were no rules to follow, and the variations made looking for a fact all the more difficult. It was always a case of what made the most sense – to the writer. If you didn’t think the way he did, you were out of luck and in for a hard slog.
Things picked up in the 11th and 12th centuries. Movable type first appeared in Europe in the 11th century. (It had been used China since the 200s.) 1180 was the first time the bible was broken into chapters.
Libraries of a sort began to appear. Religious orders could (if allowed) accumulate books, maybe dozens. They were kept in cupboards. You found them by determining which cupboard they were assigned. When they no longer fit in cupboards, they populated shelves. They would be identified by some more-or-less permanent marker, like a bust of someone on the end of the shelf. For centuries, this was the system the English used everywhere. Deeds were written up referencing a certain oak tree, for example. As English oaks could live for thousands of years, this was actually decent thinking, as long as no one cut it down.
By the 14th century, paper was cheaper than parchment, which led to books of blank sheets that people wrote in themselves. For a long time, printed documents were restricted to a small area of the page, so that others could comment, criticize, attempt to classify, and add their own knowledge to the text. Right beside it.
During the century, the price of paper dropped 75% as the new technology spread and volume production flooded the market. This had the unfortunate result we call paperwork. Government suddenly was done by document rather than command. Forms came into existence, bureaucrats came into being, and the need to make sense of all the paper became everyone’s problem. Knowledge became so voluminous that everything written cried out to be indexed. This led to inventions like desks, filing cabinets, copy systems, index cards and files, none of which was even imaginable before.
Wax-covered tablets became the mobiles of their day. People could carve out notes on them, close them to protect the writing, and erase them when they had dealt with the matter. Book presses allowed copies to be made by squeezing the page and the book so hard the ink bled onto a flimsy sheet placed over it. And even without these advances, copies had to be made of all outbound correspondence, as proof in case of dispute.
Alphabetizing itself evolved in fits and starts. The inconsistencies of spelling held it back, but it also took a while for writers to go to the second level, to alphabetize by the first two letters (let alone three or four) of the first word or the topic word. School grades started a migration to the alphabet only in the mid 1800s, with an F for Failure replacing E (confusable with Excellent) only decades later. Now of course, everything is alphabetized, from seating sections to debt ratings. AAA automatically implies excellence. ABC automatically means a high placement on the list.
And yet, the whole system is completely arbitrary. A does not have to be the first letter of the alphabet, any more than QWERTY is the natural order. And many were (and probably continue to be) against it. Author Samuel Taylor Coleridge “stormed” against alphabetizing everything. He was a “vehement opponent”, calling it “nothing more than a huge unconnected miscellany…in an arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters.”
Back in the cultural dilemma, it is true that many Middle Eastern alphabets begin with A, be it aleph or alpha or something similar. But then they diverge right away. The hubris of our alphabet was brought into focus during the Olympics, a global event, where countries parade in and out of the main stadium in alphabetical order. This came to a screeching halt when Korea hosted them, soon followed by China. Their specified orders confused the hell out of television hosts, never knowing who was next, and fearing their own country would be called to enter during a commercial break. Flanders has noted it all.
Even the origins of words has been transformed by the advent of alphabetizing everything. Just one example from the book is the word “file”, which did not exist before in this meaning. The word comes from the Latin for thread or string. Think filament. The modern usage comes from the practice of punching a hole in pieces of paper and threading string or even just thread through them to keep them together in one place. They could then be hung on the wall, since filing cabinets were still hundreds of years off in the future, but nails were readily available. As you read A Place for Everything, you will notice all kinds of familiar words and names that have shaped this new era and this new obsession with organizing everything.
And let there be no doubt on that score. We not only catalog all the books in libraries (though Flanders says investigations have shown 10% miss out are therefore never accessed), but even libraries themselves are catalogued. WorldCat has collected and massaged the data of 72,000 libraries around the world. This is obviously way beyond the capability of the index card. It created the need for databases, where files are just icons and all the data is in one huge memory drive, instantly and infinitel searchable. We have come full circle, where any data can be retrieved, and nothing has to be separated out except by our desire for it. But perhaps fortunately, Flanders doesn’t go there.
Unusually, the book has not one but two systems of endnotes, at the end of every chapter as well at the back of the book. This keeps the reader bouncing. The chapter ones are more like margin notes, with trivia or impact that doesn’t really belong in the paragraph. The back of the book notes are the more standard citations and references. Same goes for images; there are two collections. Twenty-one images are scattered throughout, but there is also a collection of 11 images in an insert. It’s a very busy book.
And for all that, the book is arranged chronologically.
David Wineberg
Show More
And by the way, there are all kinds of societies that don’t use our alphabet. In A Place for Everything, she has done her usual yeoman’s job of research, and produced a book that probes in all kinds of directions for fascinating developments, accomplishments, and trivia. It’s another gem from the author of Inside The Victorian Home, a highly appreciated and exhaustive feat, examining life for the emerging middle class in the 1800s. This one reaches even farther.In the beginning, there was no need for alphabetizing anything, or even for an alphabet. There was not much knowledge to impart, no overwhelming commerce to track, no need for government processes. As time went on and history stacked up, oral stories became too big to handle. No one could carry everything just in their heads.
Different societies dealt with it in different ways. Writing developed, but mostly just in religious quarters, where the stories and their interpretations were the lifeblood. Most of the book seems to dwell on monks and priests, as they made all the discoveries and innovations. They formed the vast majority of those who could even read at all until 500 years ago. Even the scientists were monks and ministers.
Knowledge grew to the point where it needed to be classified in order to be retrievable. Everyone had their own ideas of how to achieve this. For example, the Book of Interpretation of Hebrew Names listed them in the order they appeared in the bible. Concordances, attempts to index everything in the bible for faster research, were a major source for innovations, through trial and error and fashion.
Should a phrase be tagged by its first word (I, The, An, One -for example) or by the central noun or verb? For a very long time, things were classified by their category in a hierarchy, from the top down. Books were written with heavenly hierarchy as their organizing spine. It always began with God, followed by angels, the king, lords, patrons, and so on down the line. Finding what you actually came for was, shall we say, challenging.
In his The Analytical Language of John Wilkins (a 17th century writer), Jorge Luis Borges cited a (probably imaginary)Chinese encyclopedia which classified all animals in the following categories: “a) those that belong to the Emperor, b) embalmed ones, c) those that are trained, d) suckling pigs, e) mermaids, f) fabulous ones, g) stray dogs, h) those that are included in this classification, i) those that tremble as if they were mad, j) innumerable ones, k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, l) others, m) those that have just broken a flower vase, n) those that resemble flies from a distance.” Absurd, but very close to the truth, as Flanders repeatedly discovered in her research. Consistency, let alone science, had yet to leave their marks.
As alphabets developed, some writers used them as their basis of organization, but it was centuries before it became common and acceptable, let alone mandatory. For one thing, the lack of people able to read or write meant that spelling was up to the writer. There were no rules to follow, and the variations made looking for a fact all the more difficult. It was always a case of what made the most sense – to the writer. If you didn’t think the way he did, you were out of luck and in for a hard slog.
Things picked up in the 11th and 12th centuries. Movable type first appeared in Europe in the 11th century. (It had been used China since the 200s.) 1180 was the first time the bible was broken into chapters.
Libraries of a sort began to appear. Religious orders could (if allowed) accumulate books, maybe dozens. They were kept in cupboards. You found them by determining which cupboard they were assigned. When they no longer fit in cupboards, they populated shelves. They would be identified by some more-or-less permanent marker, like a bust of someone on the end of the shelf. For centuries, this was the system the English used everywhere. Deeds were written up referencing a certain oak tree, for example. As English oaks could live for thousands of years, this was actually decent thinking, as long as no one cut it down.
By the 14th century, paper was cheaper than parchment, which led to books of blank sheets that people wrote in themselves. For a long time, printed documents were restricted to a small area of the page, so that others could comment, criticize, attempt to classify, and add their own knowledge to the text. Right beside it.
During the century, the price of paper dropped 75% as the new technology spread and volume production flooded the market. This had the unfortunate result we call paperwork. Government suddenly was done by document rather than command. Forms came into existence, bureaucrats came into being, and the need to make sense of all the paper became everyone’s problem. Knowledge became so voluminous that everything written cried out to be indexed. This led to inventions like desks, filing cabinets, copy systems, index cards and files, none of which was even imaginable before.
Wax-covered tablets became the mobiles of their day. People could carve out notes on them, close them to protect the writing, and erase them when they had dealt with the matter. Book presses allowed copies to be made by squeezing the page and the book so hard the ink bled onto a flimsy sheet placed over it. And even without these advances, copies had to be made of all outbound correspondence, as proof in case of dispute.
Alphabetizing itself evolved in fits and starts. The inconsistencies of spelling held it back, but it also took a while for writers to go to the second level, to alphabetize by the first two letters (let alone three or four) of the first word or the topic word. School grades started a migration to the alphabet only in the mid 1800s, with an F for Failure replacing E (confusable with Excellent) only decades later. Now of course, everything is alphabetized, from seating sections to debt ratings. AAA automatically implies excellence. ABC automatically means a high placement on the list.
And yet, the whole system is completely arbitrary. A does not have to be the first letter of the alphabet, any more than QWERTY is the natural order. And many were (and probably continue to be) against it. Author Samuel Taylor Coleridge “stormed” against alphabetizing everything. He was a “vehement opponent”, calling it “nothing more than a huge unconnected miscellany…in an arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters.”
Back in the cultural dilemma, it is true that many Middle Eastern alphabets begin with A, be it aleph or alpha or something similar. But then they diverge right away. The hubris of our alphabet was brought into focus during the Olympics, a global event, where countries parade in and out of the main stadium in alphabetical order. This came to a screeching halt when Korea hosted them, soon followed by China. Their specified orders confused the hell out of television hosts, never knowing who was next, and fearing their own country would be called to enter during a commercial break. Flanders has noted it all.
Even the origins of words has been transformed by the advent of alphabetizing everything. Just one example from the book is the word “file”, which did not exist before in this meaning. The word comes from the Latin for thread or string. Think filament. The modern usage comes from the practice of punching a hole in pieces of paper and threading string or even just thread through them to keep them together in one place. They could then be hung on the wall, since filing cabinets were still hundreds of years off in the future, but nails were readily available. As you read A Place for Everything, you will notice all kinds of familiar words and names that have shaped this new era and this new obsession with organizing everything.
And let there be no doubt on that score. We not only catalog all the books in libraries (though Flanders says investigations have shown 10% miss out are therefore never accessed), but even libraries themselves are catalogued. WorldCat has collected and massaged the data of 72,000 libraries around the world. This is obviously way beyond the capability of the index card. It created the need for databases, where files are just icons and all the data is in one huge memory drive, instantly and infinitel searchable. We have come full circle, where any data can be retrieved, and nothing has to be separated out except by our desire for it. But perhaps fortunately, Flanders doesn’t go there.
Unusually, the book has not one but two systems of endnotes, at the end of every chapter as well at the back of the book. This keeps the reader bouncing. The chapter ones are more like margin notes, with trivia or impact that doesn’t really belong in the paragraph. The back of the book notes are the more standard citations and references. Same goes for images; there are two collections. Twenty-one images are scattered throughout, but there is also a collection of 11 images in an insert. It’s a very busy book.
And for all that, the book is arranged chronologically.
David Wineberg
Show Less
LibraryThing member muddyboy
This is a very interesting book for a narrow audience - particularly librarians. It is not just about the origin of alphabetical order in things like encyclopedias, card catalogues, scientific manuals etc. The book goes back to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt up to recent times. Also covered are what
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people wrote on and wrote with along with the people who assembled and stored information over the decades. Luckily I am into historical trivia and liked it. Those who are not will want to scream. Also, I loved that I have a personal library larger than any in the world during the 1300's. Show Less
LibraryThing member JBD1
A perfectly serviceable historical account of how we came to organize (many) things alphabetically. Much of the story will be familiar to those who have read Ann Blair, Tom Mullaney, and others, but Flanders does a good job of synthesizing her sources.
LibraryThing member dono421846
One wouldn't perhaps have thought that there was enough about the development of alphabetization to fill a book. And while the text does sag a bit, as the author digresses into what is perhaps her true topic--the developmental history of information organization--she manages to find quite a bit
Of special interest in her account is the role that commonplace books have played. This practice, once ubiquitous, has fallen below the notice of many, so it is good to see a substantive treatment of the practice, and how it influenced the way that books were organized.
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that is new and intriguing. Perhaps its most general and valuable contribution is to demonstrate clearly how much that we take for granted, and treat as "natural" or self-evident, is actually arbitrary and achieved dominance only after centuries of effort. We should apply this lesson more broadly, especially when passing judgment on the "strange" ways that other cultures do things.Of special interest in her account is the role that commonplace books have played. This practice, once ubiquitous, has fallen below the notice of many, so it is good to see a substantive treatment of the practice, and how it influenced the way that books were organized.
Show Less
LibraryThing member adzebill
An interesting overview of filing, ordering, and alphabetising, and all the various systems that were tried before alphabetical order dominated – and abruptly disappeared, to be replaced by the power of the search engine. The first half of this book, dealing as it did with much medieval wrangling
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over manuscript organisation, rather dragged, and it felt like the latter part was a bit rushed: I'd have liked much more on the history of blackboards and office supplies, and the vileness of Melvil Dewey. I cannot fault the book on its organisation (as you'd expect): exemplary notes, references, citations, and lists of illustrations. Show Less
LibraryThing member steve02476
A deeply researched history of the use of alphabetization, indexing, cataloging, and various methods of organizing information and knowledge. You can learn a lot of Western history along the way. If this is the sort of thing that sounds tedious to you, then it probably will be! Conversely, if you
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think this might be intriguing and fun, then I bet you’d enjoy the book. Show Less
LibraryThing member tuckerresearch
An interesting history of something that seems so commonplace and natural as to have always been: alphabetical order. But, more than that, it is also a history of sorting information from the era before alphabetical order to today. As such, it also discusses not just the theoretical concept of
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ordering, but physical items for sorting and in need of sorting. Papers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, desks, cubbyholes, index cards, library catalogs, paintings, books, marginalia, Wunderkammer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For bookish, academic, historianish types, this is an excellent, interesting, engaging book. With endnotes, bibliography, index, and images, both in text and color plates. The only thing I could complain about is I wish there were twice as many images. Show Less
Language
Original publication date
2020-02-06
ISBN
9781541675070
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