ignored character is not ignored

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AElfwine Mischler

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Apr 6, 2026, 7:59:30 AM (4 days ago) Apr 6
to SKYIndexUsers
Sky 8.

I'm (finally) starting on a huge index that I've been waiting two years for. This book has a lot of Jewish and Muslim names, and uses the accent grave ( ` ; Unicode 0060) for Arabic ayn and the Hebrew equivalent (I don't know any Hebrew). I have checked that the accent is in the list of characters to be ignored, but Sky still wants to sort a name beginning with that character at the top with symbols. Yes, I could find every case of that character and code it to be ignored, but I'd rather just have Sky behave itself. 

Does anyone have any idea how to deal with a recalcitrant program?

Thank you!

Ælfwine Mischler
Time zone: UTC +2

Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
American Society for Indexing (ASI)


Deborah Patton

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Apr 6, 2026, 8:26:19 AM (4 days ago) Apr 6
to AElfwine Mischler, SKYIndexUsers
Hi there,
I wonder if you've conflated ignored words and ignored text?? 
Ignored words are configured in the Options>Data Entry Ignored Words list. But ignored text has no list that I can think of. Those always have to be added either during data entry, or found later with a pattern and ignored as a big clump with Find/Replace. Kamm (or others) might help with a pattern for that.
I tried adding a character to the Ignored Words list and it didn't work but there was no space between my character and the word I'd attached it to. SKY couldn't differentiate it as a word that way.I look forward to hearing what others might know.
Deborah

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AElfwine Mischler

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Apr 6, 2026, 8:39:39 AM (4 days ago) Apr 6
to Deborah Patton, SKYIndexUsers
I'm looking at Options > Index > Sorting. Under Sort Method, the second field is Ignored Characters. I've worked with this many times before because I often have to add the half circles that many authors use for ayn (ʿ) and hamza (ʾ). (And when I do so Sky changes the first few characters to something weird, so I have a template that I use with these characters in the field. I spoke about this in my webinar on using diacritics and wrote about it in my article on the same topic.)

The accent grave was there by default, but it is not getting ignored.

I see now that the fifth field under Sort Method is Symbols. I've never bothered with this before, but it seems that the accent grave is there also. Perhaps if I remove it from Symbols things will work? . . . . . .
Nope, that didn't work. (And the same weirdness occurred when I copied it back into the field.)

Still hoping someone can figure this out.


Ælfwine Mischler
Time zone: UTC +2

Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
American Society for Indexing (ASI)



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