Arabic or Iranian diacritics affecting alphabetical sorting of names

[Joanna Penning]

Hi,

I am working on an index to a book on 18 cent. Indian/Islamic poetry that has a lot of names with first letter with a dot either under, or above. These are sorting to the top of my index, and I wondered -  is there any way to get them to sort by first letter i.e. alphabetical? Diacritics that come before the first letter I have used ' Format< Ignore text ..' but that doesn't work with these. Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Jo

[AElfwine Mischler]

Joanna, for details you can see my webinar for ASI on using diacritics in Sky 7 and 8, or the latest issue of The Indexer, in which I have an article on diacritics in Sky 8.

Briefly, you have to tell Sky where to sort these characters.

Go to Options > Index Style > Define alphabet groups. That will open a table in which you have to enter the lowercase version of each character you have used in the right letter group. So S with dot under S, etc. I find it best to take these characters from Sky's character map so that you don't have problems with different fonts.

Also, if your author uses half circles for 'ayn and hamza -- rather than single quotation marks -- you have to put these into the Ignored Characters. Go to Options > Sorting > Sort Method > Ignored characters. Paste in the half circles from the Character Map. But note that there is a bug in Sky, and when you do this, the slash mark (/) changes to &slash; and causes major weirdness in sorting the subs. Simply delete &slash; and replace it with an actual / . 

Some other tips: If you author uses single quotation marks for 'ayn and hamza, turn off Smart Quotes in Sky and in Word. Otherwise the program will take over and change the direction of many of them. I also find it best to sort word-by-word when there are a lot of Arabic names, especially when both classical and modern names are in the text. That way the variations of spelling sort together. 

I also have a webinar on ASI and an article in The Indexer on indexing Arabic names, if you need such help.

Happy indexing!

Ælfwine Mischler

mid-May through mid-September: time zone UTC -4

Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com

Business email: aelf...@mischlereditorial.com

Website: www.MischlerEditorial.com

American Society for Indexing (ASI)

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[Joanna Penning]

Hi again, thanks both. I have used Maria's advice in this case - typing the same first word, but without the diacritics, in front of the main heading term and then Format> Ctrl+t (for hidden text) which worked well, and didn't take long in S8. Fab!

Have a good weekend.

Jo

Joanna Penning

Accredited Indexer

[Joanna Penning]

Hi, thanks for the help. I tried Maria's advice first on hidden text  i.e. typed each name, but without the diacritics, in front of each main heading text, and then Format>Ctrl+t to hide it and all was good. Didn't take long with S8. Fab!

Have a nice weekend and thanks again.

JO

Joanna Penning

Accredited Indexer

On Friday, June 27, 2025 at 2:59:03 PM UTC+1 AElfwine Mischler wrote: