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Sorting

Both the Headwords and the Contexts can be sorted in many different ways.

To select a different sort, do any of the following:
  • click on a column header
  • click on the sort labels in the status bar
  • go to the Headwords menu or the Contexts menu and choose 'Sort by'
  • use the pop-up menus (right-click when in the wordlist or context views). 

    Headwords can be sorted in any of the following ways:
  • by alphabetical word order, ascending and descending
  • by alphabetical string order, ascending and descending
      (see below for difference between word and string sorts, and important information on punctuation and accented and non-Western characters)
  • by length of word, ascending and descending
  • by frequency of the words' occurrences, ascending and descending
  • by word endings (reading the word from end to start - sometimes called a reverse sort)
  • by order of their first occurrence

    Lemmatising is a special way of sorting headwords, allowing you to arrange related words in the order you desire.

    Contexts can be sorted in any of the following ways:
  • by alphabetical order, ascending and descending
  • by length of context, ascending and descending
  • by order of the contexts' occurrences in the source text, ascending and descending
  • by any reference category which you have defined

    In addition, centred contexts can be sorted
  • by the words which are 1, 2, 3, and 4 words before the headword 
  • by the words which are 1, 2, 3, and 4 words after the headword 
  • by the string before the headword
  • by the string after the headword

    (see below for difference between word and string sorts, and important information on accented and non-Western characters)


    Sorting contexts by words before and after headword

    Sorting by words before and after the headword applies to the Centred Context View and choosing one of these sorts will switch to the Centred view if it is not currently displayed.

    Also, sorting by words before and after the headword is done using the contexts which you have currently selected.  For example, take the case where you have made a concordance to verse and chosen the actual line as context for each word.  You then choose to sort contexts by the words which are (say) one word to the left of the headword.  In the case of a word which comes at the start of a verse line, there is no word to its left in your chosen context and it will not take part in the sorting: that is, the program does not take account of words which are not in your chosen context.  If you wanted to alter this behaviour, you would go to Context Styles on the Text menu and choose contexts of selected length so that each word, even if at the start of a line, was preceded by a set number of words of context.  Then re-make your concordance.

    How sorting works

    Sorts take effect cumulatively. For example, if you sort headwords by descending alphabetical order and then by frequency of occurrence, a run of words which all have the same frequency of occurrence will still be arranged in descending alphabetical order. 

    When a concordance is loaded, headwords are always sorted by ascending alphabetic string order, and contexts by ascending order of occurrence. You can therefore revert to this arrangement by choosing Revert on the File menu, which reloads the concordance from disk.

    The Centred Context View and the Left-Aligned Context View can each have its own sort, so switching back and forth between the two does not alter the sort you have chosen for either. 

    As usual in Concordance, the sort you have chosen for the on-screen display will be used when you output results (i.e. save a concordance as a text or HTML file or a Web Concordance or print it).



    Word sorts and String sorts treat special characters differently

    A word sort treats hyphens and apostrophes differently from other symbols that are not alphanumeric, in order to ensure that words such as "to-morrow" and "tomorrow" stay together.  A string sort, on the other hand, gives equal weight to every character when sorting.  

    A word sort also treats 'international' characters (as Microsoft calls them, meaning non-American ones) more intelligently than a string sort.  With a string sort, a word like À appears at the end of the Wordlist after ?.  Changing to a word sort will make it appear next to ? instead.

    The Wordlist View uses a string sort when a concordance is first loaded. This will often provide a quick check on anomalies, for example by bringing words with leading apostrophes to the top of the list. Such words can be edited or deleted as required.  If you then switch from the string sort to the word sort, a word such as 'Tis (with a leading apostrophe) will be moved from near the top of the list to a place beside Tis (with no leading apostrophe).


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