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Why does iTunes ignore "A" in alphabetical order?

Mr Skills

Mr Skills

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
In much the same way as iTunes ignores the word "The" in artist names when sorting alphabetically, it ignores the word "A" in album titles.

So if I have an album called "A Short Album About Frogs", it gets sorted into the S's (for "Short") instead of the A's. It's really annoying.

Is there any logic behind this?
 
miles01110 said:
Didn't you answer your own question? In/definite articles are ignored by lots of sorting algorithms.
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean it makes sense for this particular application.

Ignoring the "The" on band names makes perfect sense. In fact, earlier versions of iTunes didn't do this and it was really annoying to have 50 bands lumped together in the alphabetical list!

But I can't see the logic of doing it with "A" for album titles.
 
Jolly Jimmy said:
Use the sort album and sort artist fields if you want to change this behavior.
Click to expand...

The reason I'm worried about it is because my own band is about to release an album and the title starts with an "A". Unfortunately, anyone who browses by Album is going to have a harder time finding it in their collection.
 
Mr Skills said:
But I can't see the logic of doing it with "A" for album titles.
Click to expand...

No sorting album is going to get it right 100% of the time, but it's just the accepted way of doing things.

"A German Requiem" shouldn't be sorted by "A", it should be sorted by "German." Most of the time it's just not important.
 
-EDIT- Scrap what I was going to say...

I see now on further investigation that it ignores a/an/the everywhere. To me it would make sense to ignore it on artist names, but to do song and album names in full alphabetical order. It makes no sense to have "A Sort Of Homecoming" under "S" and "The Balland Of John And Yoko" under "B". Maybe it's just me.
 
Mr Skills said:
In much the same way as iTunes ignores the word "The" in artist names when sorting alphabetically, it ignores the word "A" in album titles.

So if I have an album called "A Short Album About Frogs", it gets sorted into the S's (for "Short") instead of the A's. It's really annoying.

Is there any logic behind this?
Click to expand...

Why there is not a standard for this? 😕
 
I like how iTunes let's you adjust the sorting for any item. Comes in handy to sort items like I want, regardless of the standard.
 
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