Synchronicity: There are letters listing in today’s OCA tax photograph — the U and T of HAIRCUT. And there’s a letter listing in Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy today: a Z that tilts into an N.
Encyclopedias haven’t always been alphabetical. The structure of a medieval encyclopedia was hierarchical, reflecting a divinely ordered universe. Begin with God, then human beings, animals, and on to inanimate things. The change to alphabetical order, Judith Flanders argues, marks a change in worldview.