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Practise it now
Drag the cards into dictionary order, the order these words would appear in a dictionary.
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A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Ordering words letter by letter
Put these words into alphabetical order: arm, bird, apple, land. Which word comes third?
Order one list and watch where the comparison has to move past the first letter.
apple
arm
land
bird
Answer: bird
How you get there
In alphabetical order the words run apple, arm, bird, land, so the third of them is bird. Compare the opening letters first, and only when two words share one do you move along to the next letter, and then the next. That is why apple comes before arm: read them letter by letter until they first disagree, and the earlier letter wins.
Why the other answers tempt
A word that looks shortest or most familiar has no claim on any place; only the letters decide.
If they are stuck, say this
Sort on the first letter. Only when two words start the same do you compare their second letters, then their third.
Drag the cards into dictionary order, the order these words would appear in a dictionary.
Alphabetical order is decided letter by letter, left to right, and you stop at the first letter where two words disagree. Here the hardest pair is CAR and CARE: they share CAR and the fourth letter is where they part, which is why CAR comes first. CAR and CARE show the rule children forget. One word is the whole beginning of the other, so there is no letter to compare at the end. The word that runs out first goes first, which is why a dictionary has CAR before CARE and CARE before CAREFUL. The reliable habit is to line the words up under each other and run a finger down the columns, because the eye is very willing to compare the second letters of one pair with the third letters of another.
What to say if they get stuck
Compare two words at a time. Look at their first letters, and only move on to the second letters if the first letters are the same.
Several of these words start the same way. When that happens, keep sliding right until you find the first letter where they disagree, and decide there.
CAR and CARE start with exactly the same letters. When one word simply runs out, the shorter word comes first.
Questions parents ask about order words alphabetically
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Order words by successive alphabetic characters. It is one of 26 named verbal reasoning skills in the 11+, in the alphabet strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
A word that looks shortest or most familiar has no claim on any place; only the letters decide. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Sort on the first letter. Only when two words start the same do you compare their second letters, then their third.
The skill map draws the line here: No semantic ordering. A question past that line is testing a different named verbal reasoning skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The alphabet strand holds 2 skills that are tested together, and the page next to order words alphabetically is locate an alphabet position. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Dictionary Order, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to order words alphabetically, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Verbal reasoning is a set of question types, not a subject to revise
A free diagnostic works out which of the codes, analogies, word puzzles and logic types are already secure, and which are not.
