The order in which a system sorts characters is called its collating sequence or sort order.
Collating sequence definitions are built on top of character set definitions, but languages that use the same character set can order characters differently. For example, in Spanish “Co” comes before “Cho,” because “Ch” is considered to be a single letter; in English “Cho” alphabetically precedes “Co.”
Ordering conventions can also vary between languages for letter-diacritic combinations. For instance, “Å” might come after “z,” even though “a” (without diacritics) comes before “b.”
This section discusses some common considerations in defining collating sequences, but it is not intended to be comprehensive. Please refer to general references on collating sequences for more information.
