What the Sort Lines Alphabetically does
The line sorter puts any list in order: alphabetically from A to Z or Z to A, in natural number order, by length, reversed or shuffled randomly. Paste names, keywords, product titles, file names or any other list with one entry per line, choose the order and copy or download the result.
Sorting is language-aware. Instead of comparing raw character codes — which puts “Zebra” before “apple” and all accented letters at the end — the tool uses your language’s collation rules, so “Ärger” sorts next to “Arger” in German and “ñ” follows “n” in Spanish. Natural sorting compares numbers by their value, so “Chapter 2” comes before “Chapter 10”.
Options let you ignore upper and lower case, trim spaces at the ends of lines and remove empty lines. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
When to use it
Lists and directories
Alphabetize names, participants, glossary terms or bibliography entries.
File names and versions
Use natural order to sort file names, versions or numbered items the way people expect.
Random order
Shuffle a list of names for a draw, quiz questions or presentation order.
Data cleanup
Sort keyword lists or spreadsheet columns before comparing or de-duplicating them.
Tips for the best results
- Choose “Natural” whenever your lines contain numbers, such as “item 9” and “item 10”.
- “By length” sorts the shortest lines first — handy for finding very short or very long entries.
- Combine with our duplicate remover to get a sorted list of unique entries.
- Shuffling uses your browser’s random number generator; for official lotteries use a certified draw.
How the Sort Lines Alphabetically works
The lines are compared with Intl.Collator, the internationalization API built into your browser. It implements the Unicode Collation Algorithm with the rules of your language, which decides how letters with accents, umlauts and other special characters are ordered.
With “Ignore upper/lower case” switched on, the comparison ignores case but still distinguishes accents; when two lines are otherwise equal, a full comparison decides, so the result is always the same for the same input. Natural order enables the collator’s numeric option.
Shuffling uses the Fisher–Yates algorithm, which gives every possible order the same probability.