Alphabetize a List
Paste your list — one item per line (commas work too). Sort A–Z or Z–A, or remove duplicates from your list without sorting: the duplicate line remover keeps the first occurrence and your original order. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. You can also shuffle list items into a random order — same box, nothing uploaded.
Random order — runs in your browser · Suitable for casual ordering — not for certified drawings, lotteries or research allocation.
How the sort works (and why it beats a spreadsheet for quick jobs)
Paste your list — one item per line, or a single comma-separated line (the tool detects which and keeps the same format in the result). Choose A–Z or Z–A, and the list is reordered instantly in your browser. For a one-off job this is faster than opening a spreadsheet, and unlike online tools that post your list to a server, nothing here leaves the page — safe for client names, invite lists and anything else you'd rather not upload.
Alphabetizing titles: the “Ignore A/An/The” rule
Style guides and library catalogs alphabetize titles by the first significant word — “The Great Gatsby” files under G, not T. Turn on “Ignore A/An/The” and leading articles are skipped for sorting while staying in the text, so reading lists, bibliographies and filmographies come out the way a librarian would order them. This matters for reference lists: APA, MLA and Chicago all ignore leading articles when ordering works by title.
Removing duplicates while you sort
Tick “Remove duplicates” and repeated entries collapse into one — comparison is case-insensitive, so “Banana bread” and “banana bread” count as the same item. Combined with sorting, this turns a messy pasted-together list (from several emails, sheets or chats) into a clean deduplicated register in one step. After sorting, the “items sorted” note shows how many entries remain, so you can see at a glance how many duplicates were dropped.
Numbers sort like a human, not like a computer
Naive alphabetical sorting puts “item 10” before “item 2” because the character 1 comes before 2. This tool sorts numerically when items contain numbers — item 2, item 9, item 10 — the order a person expects for chapters, episodes, file names and versioned drafts. It's the same natural ordering your operating system's file manager uses.
Accents and other alphabets sort correctly for your language
Alphabetical order is language-specific: Swedish files å, ä and ö after z; Spanish treats ñ as its own letter after n; German sorts ä like a. This page sorts with your language's real collation rules (each localized version of this page uses its own), so a Swedish member list or a Spanish glossary comes out in native order — something generic ASCII sorters silently get wrong.
What people alphabetize most
The common jobs we see: reference lists and bibliographies (with articles ignored), guest and attendee lists (with duplicates removed), glossaries and index terms, book and film collections, tag and keyword sets before publishing, and one-line CSV values that need a stable order before a diff or code review. If your next step is counting or cleaning the text, the “Send to” buttons pass the sorted list straight to the Word Counter or Remove Line Breaks tool.
Remove duplicate lines without sorting
The Remove duplicate lines action de-duplicates your list while preserving input order — the first occurrence wins and keeps its exact capitalization and spacing. By default the comparison is exact (case-sensitive, edge spaces significant) and blank lines are removed; tick «Ignore capitalization» or «Ignore spaces at line edges» to treat Apple / apple / “ apple ” as the same line — the kept line is never rewritten. This removes duplicates from a list line-by-line; it does not touch repeated words inside a line.
Sort, dedupe — or shuffle
The same list box does three jobs. Sort A→Z or Z→A puts items in alphabetical order; Remove duplicate lines cleans repeats; Shuffle list works as a random list generator — a random order generator that rearranges your items right in your browser using casual pseudorandom ordering. Every item is kept exactly as typed; nothing is uploaded. To randomize list order again, just click Shuffle again.
Is my list uploaded anywhere?
No. Sorting runs entirely in your browser with JavaScript — nothing is sent to a server, stored, or logged.
How do I alphabetize a list?
Paste the list above — one item per line — and click Sort A→Z. For reverse alphabetical order, click Sort Z→A. Numbers sort naturally, so “item 2” comes before “item 10”.
Can it remove duplicate lines?
Yes — tick “Remove duplicates” before sorting and repeated items are kept only once (comparison ignores capitalization). Blank lines are removed automatically.
Can I sort a comma-separated list?
Yes. If your list is on one line separated by commas, it’s sorted the same way and returned comma-separated — handy for tags, names, or keyword lists.
What does “Ignore A/An/The” do?
It sorts titles the way libraries and bibliographies do: a leading “A”, “An” or “The” is skipped, so “The Great Gatsby” files under G. The words stay in your list — they’re only ignored for ordering.
Does “Remove duplicate lines” also remove repeated words?
No — it compares whole lines, not words inside a line. The first occurrence of each line is kept exactly as you typed it (capitalization and spaces included); the options only change how lines are compared, never how the kept line is written. Blank-line removal is on by default; turn it off to keep the first blank line.
How is shuffling different from sorting?
Sorting puts items in a defined order (alphabetical), so the same list always sorts the same way. Shuffling does the opposite: it rearranges items into a casual random order, and clicking Shuffle again can produce a new order each time. The shuffle runs entirely in your browser and keeps every item exactly as you typed it. It is fine for mixing up a reading list or seating order — for certified drawings or research randomization, use a dedicated audited tool.