ISO 12199

Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet

This International Standard specifies the sequence of characters to be used in the alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and lexicographical data (terms, term elements, or words) represented in the Latin alphabet. Character sets of languages represented in the Latin alphabet are taken into account insofar as terminological or lexicographical data have been recorded. Character sets used in internationally standardized transliteration into Latin script are also taken into account. The sequence of alphabetical characters given is intended for multilingual purposes only and is not intended to affect the alphabetical order of any specific language. The main part of this International Standard specifies letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Normative annex A treats word-by-word ordering, which is a widely used alternative to this system. Informative annex B gives two additional rules that may be useful for lexicographical and terminological ordering. Informative annex C gives ordering rules for chemical names. Informative annex D lists the character repertoire of the Latin alphabet. Informative annex E lists languages using the Latin alphabet. Informative annex F gives alphabetical sequences derived from the sequence specified in this International Standard for a number of languages that use the Latin alphabet. Normative annex G gives a formal description of the rules laid down in the main part of this International Standard conforming with ISO/IEC 14651.

Mise en ordre alphabétique des données lexicographiques et terminologiques multilingues représentées dans l'alphabet latin

General Information

• Status: Not Published
• ICS: 01.020 - Terminology (principles and coordination)
• Technical Committee: ISO/TC 37/SC 2 - Terminology workflow and language coding
• Drafting Committee: ISO/TC 37/SC 2 - Terminology workflow and language coding
• Current Stage: 6000 - International Standard under publication
• Start Date: 13-May-2022
• Completion Date: 13-May-2022

RELATIONS

• Replaces: ISO 12199:2000 - Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet
• Effective Date: 06-Jun-2022

Standards Content (sample)

FINAL
INTERNATIONAL ISO/FDIS
DRAFT
STANDARD 12199
ISO/TC 37/SC 2
Alphabetical ordering of multilingual
Secretariat: SCC
terminological and lexicographical
Voting begins on:
2022-03-17 data represented in the Latin alphabet
Voting terminates on:
Mise en ordre alphabétique des données lexicographiques et
2022-05-12
terminologiques multilingues représentées dans l'alphabet latin
RECIPIENTS OF THIS DRAFT ARE INVITED TO
SUBMIT, WITH THEIR COMMENTS, NOTIFICATION
OF ANY RELEVANT PATENT RIGHTS OF WHICH
THEY ARE AWARE AND TO PROVIDE SUPPOR TING
DOCUMENTATION.
IN ADDITION TO THEIR EVALUATION AS
Reference number
BEING ACCEPTABLE FOR INDUSTRIAL, TECHNO-
ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
LOGICAL, COMMERCIAL AND USER PURPOSES,
DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS MAY ON
OCCASION HAVE TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE
LIGHT OF THEIR POTENTIAL TO BECOME STAN-
DARDS TO WHICH REFERENCE MAY BE MADE IN
NATIONAL REGULATIONS. © ISO 2022
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
COPYRIGHT PROTECTED DOCUMENT
© ISO 2022

All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may

be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting on

the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from either ISO at the address below

or ISO’s member body in the country of the requester.
ISO copyright office
CP 401 • Ch. de Blandonnet 8
CH-1214 Vernier, Geneva
Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Website: www.iso.org
Published in Switzerland
© ISO 2022 – All rights reserved
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Contents Page

Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................iv

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................v

1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1

2 Normative references ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

3 Terms and definitions .................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

4 Preparatory procedures .............................................................................................................................................................................. 2

5 First ordering level ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

5.1 First-ordering-level values ........................................................................................................................................................... 3

5.2 First-ordering-level sequence ................................................................................................................................................... 3

5.3 Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters ........................................................................ 4

6 Second ordering level ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

6.1 Second-ordering-level values .................................................................................................................................................... 4

6.2 Special Latin letters and letters with diacritical marks .................................................................................... 5

7 Third ordering level .........................................................................................................................................................................................6

7.1 Third-ordering-level values ........................................................................................................................................................ 6

7.2 Ordering according to capitalization .................................................................................................................................. 6

8 Fourth ordering level ......................................................................................................................................................................................6

8.1 Fourth-ordering-level values ..................................................................................................................................................... 6

8.2 Ordering according to special characters ...................................................................................................................... 6

Annex A (normative) Word-by-word ordering .......................................................................................................................................... 7

Annex B (informative) Special rules for lexicographical and terminological ordering ...............................9

Annex C (informative) Ordering rules for chemical names .....................................................................................................10

Annex D (informative) Character repertoire of the Latin alphabet ................................................................................12

Annex E (informative) Languages using the Latin alphabet ...................................................................................................20

Annex F (informative) Alphabetical sequences and character repertoires ...........................................................27

Annex G (informative) Formal description of the rules of the main body of this document ................40

Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................50

iii
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards

bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out

through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical

committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International

organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work.

ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of

electrotechnical standardization.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are

described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the

different types of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the

editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of

patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of

any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or

on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents).

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not

constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and

expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO’s adherence to

the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), see

www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html.

This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Language and terminology,

Subcommittee SC 2, Terminology workflow and language coding.

This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO 12199:2000), of which it constitutes a

minor revision. The changes are as follows:

— the relationship of this document with other International Standards has been updated and

transferred from the Foreword to the Introduction;
— in Clause 2 and in the Bibliography, the references have been updated;

— ISO/IEC 14651 is cited informatively and therefore has been moved from Clause 2 to the Bibliography;

— in Annexes D, E and F, the Serbian language has been added among the languages using the Latin

alphabet, together with a character set and alphabetical ordering information relating to the Serbian

language;
— in Annex E, the references to Serbo-Croatian have been deleted;

— Annex G is cited informatively and therefore has been changed to “(informative)”.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A

complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Introduction

In the development of international terminologies, both in printed form and in databases, it is essential

to have uniform and internationally recognized rules for the alphabetical ordering of terminological

and lexicographical data, to make these terminologies more easily accessible for the users. In addition,

it will facilitate the interchange of terminological and lexicographical data.
This document complements other International Standards, such as ISO 10241-1.
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FINAL DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and
lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet
1 Scope

This document specifies the sequence of characters to be used in the alphabetical ordering of

multilingual terminological and lexicographical data (terms, term elements, or words) represented

in the Latin alphabet. Character sets of languages represented in the Latin alphabet are taken into

account insofar as terminological or lexicographical data have been recorded. Character sets used in

internationally standardized transliteration into Latin script are also taken into account.

The sequence of alphabetical characters given is intended for multilingual purposes only and is not

intended to affect the alphabetical order of any specific language.

The main part of this document specifies letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Annex A treats

word-by-word ordering, which is a widely used alternative to this system.

Annex B gives two additional rules that can be useful for lexicographical and terminological ordering.

Annex C gives ordering rules for chemical names.
Annex D lists the character repertoire of the Latin alphabet.
Annex E lists languages using the Latin alphabet.

Annex F gives alphabetical sequences derived from the sequence specified in this document for a

number of languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Annex G gives a formal description of the rules laid down in the main part of this document conforming

with ISO/IEC 14651.
2 Normative references

The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content

constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For

undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.

ISO 1087, Terminology work and terminology science — Vocabulary

ISO/IEC 10646-1 , Information technology — Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) —

Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane
3 Terms and definitions

For the purposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in ISO 1087 and the following apply.

ISO and IEC maintain terminology databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:

— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https:// www .iso .org/ obp
— IEC Electropedia: available at https:// www .electropedia .org/

1) In this minor revision of ISO 12199:2000, reference continues to be made to ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993.

ISO/IEC 10646-1 and ISO/IEC 10646-2 have since been merged into ISO/IEC 10646:2020.

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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
3.1
character

member of a set of elements used for the organization, control or representation of data

3.2
letter

character (3.1) used for writing natural language, often representing a sound in the language

3.3
digit

character (3.1) used to represent the numeric value, or part thereof, of a number

3.4
special character
character (3.1) that is not a letter (3.2) nor a digit (3.3)
EXAMPLE The space character is a special character.
3.5
ligature
character (3.1) resulting from the joining of two or more letters (3.2)

Note 1 to entry: The resulting character is, in some cases, considered a separate letter.

3.6
polygraph

two or more consecutive letters (3.2) that are regarded as one letter for some purpose

Note 1 to entry: A polygraph consisting of two or three letters may be referred to as a digraph or a trigraph,

respectively.
3.7
diacritical mark

character (3.1) that is not a letter (3.2) and is placed over, under, or through a letter or a combination of

letters
3.8
ordering

act of bringing strings of characters (3.1) into a well-defined sequence according to a string comparison

specification
4 Preparatory procedures

In the process of alphabetical ordering, character strings are compared according to a set of rules.

This document specifies the set of rules to be used for the ordering, but does not address the means of

selection of relevant character strings, nor any modification of the strings that can be needed for a given

purpose. Consequently, certain preparatory procedures can be needed before applying the ordering

rules. Depending on the needs in each individual case, it is possible that:

— the relevant character strings have to be selected, e.g. relevant terms have to be extracted from a

corpus;

— the character strings have to be modified, e.g. sentence-initial uppercase letters have to be changed

to lowercase letters, plural form of words have to be changed to singular form;
— leading zeroes or spaces can be added, e.g. in lists containing numerals.
Polygraphs are treated as sequences of separate letters.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)

An application may arrange information into several ordering fields, and determine ranking order with

several separate and independent comparisons. This document only defines a single comparison for

one such field, where the field is a character-string field.

Only the characters that appear in the string and their arrangement are taken into account. Apart from

the ordering rules and passes, no other knowledge about the words in the character string is used. For

example, dictionary information or rules about language syntax, phonetics and semantics are not used.

5 First ordering level
5.1 First-ordering-level values

When comparing strings to be ordered, the first-ordering-level values of the strings shall be considered

first. The subsequent ordering-level values need to be considered only if two or more strings have

identical first-ordering-level values.

For multilingual ordering, the following rules shall be applied (Annex A shall be applied for word-by-

word ordering).
5.2 First-ordering-level sequence
Digits and letters have the following ordering values:
a) Digits:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

NOTE 1 Sequences of digits are ordered from left to right as written, thus generating the following order,

for example: 1 10 100 11 110 111 12 19 190 2 21 3.

NOTE 2 Leading zeroes can be inserted as a preparatory procedure, e.g. to generate the following order:

0001 0002 0003 0010 0011 0012 0019 0021 0100 0110 0111 0190.
b) Basic letters of the Latin alphabet:
a A b B c C d D e E f F g G h H i I j J k K l L m M n N
o O p P q Q r R s S t T u U v V w W x X y Y z Z þ Þ

NOTE 3 This order has been established for use in multilingual environments so as to conflict with as

few individual languages as possible. See Annex F for examples of deviations from this sequence in some

languages.

Uppercase and lowercase letters shall be treated as equivalent (see Clause 7). Letters of the Latin

alphabet with diacritical marks shall be treated as equivalent to the corresponding basic Latin

letters (see Clause 6). Special letters of the Latin alphabet shall be treated as equivalent to basic

Latin letters according to Table 1 in 5.3 (see Clause 6).

The Turkish language distinguishes ı/I from i/İ, while other languages have the pair i/I only. To

order multilingual data including Turkish text, the i/I pair shall be expanded as follows:

1: ı/I U0131/U0049 latin letter dotless i (Turkish)
2: i/I U0131/U0049 latin letter i (non-Turkish)
3: i/İ U0069/U0130 latin letter i with dot above (Turkish)

It should also be noted that, for example, í (U00ED latin small letter i with acute) in normal

print is represented as latin small letter dotless i with acute. For the purpose of ordering,

however, it shall be treated as equivalent to i (U0069 latin small letter i) on the first ordering

level.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)

NOTE 4 Throughout this document, characters are referenced as UXXXX, where X is any hexadecimal

digit and refers to the position of the character in ISO/IEC 10646-1. Character names are given as in

ISO/IEC 10646-1. Most names of Latin letters start with “latin small letter …” and “latin capital letter

…”. When referring to both lowercase and uppercase letter, the name “latin letter …” is used. When there

is no danger of misinterpretation, the words “latin letter” are sometimes omitted.

c) Letters of other alphabets:

Letters of other alphabets follow in the sequences established for each alphabet. The order of non-

Latin alphabets shall be: the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, other alphabets.

NOTE 5 It is outside the scope of this document to establish the sequences for alphabets other than the

Latin alphabet. The Greek alphabet has the following sequence of letters:
α Α β Β γ Γ δ Δ ε Ε ζ Ζ η Η θ Θ ι Ι κ Κ λ Λ μ Μ ν Ν ξ Ξ
ο Ο π Π ρ Ρ σ Σ τ Τ υ Υ φ Φ χ Χ ψ Ψ ω Ω
All other characters, e.g. punctuation marks, shall be ignored. See Clause 8.
5.3 Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters

Special Latin letters shall be treated as equivalent to basic letters of the Latin alphabet according to

Table 1. Uppercase and lowercase letters shall be treated as equivalent.
Table 1 — Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters
Position Character name in ISO/IEC 10646-1 Character position for Equivalent to
lowercase/uppercase
in ISO/IEC 10646-1
01 latin letter ae U00E6 U00C6 ae
02 latin letter b with hook U0253 U0181 b
03 latin letter c with hook U0188 U0187 c
04 latin letter d with stroke U0111 U0110 d
05 latin letter d with hook U0257 U018A d
06 latin letter eth U00F0 U00D0 d
07 latin letter g with hook U0260 U0193 g
08 latin letter h with stroke U0127 U0126 h
09 latin letter k with hook U0199 U0198 k
10 latin small letter kra U0138 k
11 latin letter l with stroke U0142 U0141 l
12 latin letter eng U014B U014A n
13 latin letter o with stroke U00F8 U00D8 o
14 latin ligature oe U0153 U0152 oe
15 latin small letter sharp s U00DF ss
16 latin letter t with stroke U0167 U0166 t
No corresponding uppercase letter.
6 Second ordering level
6.1 Second-ordering-level values

If the comparison of two strings results in identical first-ordering-level values, second-ordering-level

values shall be applied according to 6.2.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
6.2 Special Latin letters and letters with diacritical marks

Special Latin letters, that have been treated as equivalent to basic Latin letters according to Table 1,

shall be ordered according to the order in Table 1.
Diacritical marks shall be ordered according to Table 2.

NOTE This order has been established for multilingual environments so as to be in conflict with as few

individual languages as possible. See Annex F for examples of deviations from this sequence in some languages.

Table 2 — Ordering of diacritical marks
Position Name Position for combining
diacritical mark in
ISO/IEC 10646-1
0000 none —
0100 acute accent U0301
0200 grave accent U0300
0300 breve U0306
0301 breve and acute —
0302 breve and grave —
0310 breve and hook above —
0311 breve and tilde —
0313 breve and dot below —
0315 breve and comma below —
0400 circumflex accent U0302
0401 circumflex and acute —
0402 circumflex and grave —
0410 circumflex and hook above —
0411 circumflex and tilde —
0413 circumflex and dot below —
0500 circumflex accent below U032D
0600 caron U030C
0614 caron and cedilla —
0700 ring above U030A
0701 ring above and acute —
0800 diaeresis U0308
0813 diaeresis and dot below —
0817 diaeresis and macron —
0900 double acute accent U030B
1000 hook above U0309
1100 tilde U0303
1200 dot above U0307
1300 dot below U0323
1400 cedilla U0327
1500 comma above/below U0313 and U0326
1600 ogonek U0328
The position of combining comma above and below the base character.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Table 2 (continued)
Position Name Position for combining
diacritical mark in
ISO/IEC 10646-1
1700 macron U0304
1713 macron and dot below —
1800 macron below U0331
1900 preceded by apostrophe —
2000 followed by apostrophe —
2100 horn U031B
2101 horn and acute —
2102 horn and grave —
2110 horn and hook above —
2111 horn and tilde —
2113 horn and dot below —
The position of combining comma above and below the base character.
7 Third ordering level
7.1 Third-ordering-level values

If the comparison of two strings results in identical first- and second-ordering-level values, third-

ordering-level values shall be applied according to 7.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
7.2 Ordering according to capitalization

A lowercase letter shall be ordered before the corresponding uppercase letter. [See 5.2, item b), first

paragraph after NOTE 3.]

NOTE The terms “lowercase letter” and “uppercase letter” are used for members of the sets “a b c …” and “A

B C …”, respectively. In character names, the naming conventions of ISO/IEC 10646-1 are used. ISO/IEC 10646-1

uses “latin small letter” and “latin capital letter”, respectively.
8 Fourth ordering level
8.1 Fourth-ordering-level values

If the comparison of two strings results in identical first-, second- and third-ordering-level values,

fourth-ordering-level values shall be applied according to 8.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
8.2 Ordering according to special characters

Special characters are ordered according to the sequence of the default template of ISO/IEC 14651. For

most special characters, this is the order in which they are listed in ISO/IEC 10646-1.

NOTE In word-by-word ordering (see Annex A), the space character and possibly other special characters

can have special functions as key separators.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Annex A
(normative)
Word-by-word ordering
A.1 Principles of word-by-word ordering

As noted in the Scope, this document specifies the letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Word-

by-word ordering is a widely used alternative to this system. Table A.1 illustrates the difference

between letter-by-letter ordering and word-by-word ordering.
Table A.1 — Letter-by-letter and word-by-word ordering
Letter-by-letter ordering Word-by-word ordering
ad ad
adhesive ad hoc
ad hoc ad infinitum
adieu adhesive
ad infinitum adieu
adipose adipose
A.2 Multiple-key ordering

Single-key ordering is described in the main body of this document. In multiple-key ordering, all the

ordering rules are applied to one key before they are applied to the next, until all the keys have been

considered or a unique sequence has been established.

NOTE One typical example of multiple-key ordering is a list of delegates to a meeting, where the first key can

be the country names, the second key can be the delegates’ last names, and the third key can be the delegates’

first names. In this example, if a country has one delegate only, the second key (last names) will not be considered.

A.3 Word-by-word ordering as multiple-key ordering

In word-by-word ordering, space characters, and possibly also by definition other characters, are key

separators. The key-separator characters function as key separators only, and they have no position in

the ordering sequence.

When the character string has been divided into a sequence of keys, the ordering rules of the main body

of this document are invoked for one key at a time.

NOTE 1 In addition to the space characters, some or all punctuation marks can be defined as key separators.

It can also be useful to define some space characters as key separators, while other space characters remain

special characters within a key. The choices depend on the language(s) and type of strings to be ordered.

NOTE 2 If space characters and hyphens are defined as key separators, the title of this clause would be split

into the following keys: , where each key

is contained within < and >, and the spaces are added for increased readability.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
A.4 Simple word-by-word ordering

If the text to be ordered using word-by-word ordering contains very few special Latin letters and

diacritical marks, the following extension to the rules in the main body of this document will produce

the same or nearly the same output as the rules described in Clause A.3.

On the first ordering level (see 5.2), the space character is added as the first item. Items 1, 2, and 3 in

5.2 then become items 2, 3, and 4. The space character is not treated as a special character on the fourth

ordering level (see Clause 8).

NOTE Depending on the language(s) and type of strings to be ordered, it can be useful to treat even other

special characters (e.g. hyphens) in the same way as the space character.
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Annex B
(informative)
Special rules for lexicographical and terminological ordering
B.1 Background

For lexicographical and terminological applications, it can sometimes be desirable to add additional

ordering criteria to the rules that are described in the main body of this document.

The features that are described in this annex cannot easily be described in the formalism given in

ISO/IEC 14651.
B.2 Position relative to baseline

It can be desirable to distinguish, for example, m2, m , m for ordering purposes. If this is deemed

necessary, it is recommended that this be done on the third ordering level (see Clause 7) combined with

capitalization.

The ordering value of any given character based on its position relative to the baseline may be

determined according to Table B.1.
Table B.1 — Position relative to baseline
1 character(s) on baseline
2 character(s) above baseline, superscript character(s)
3 character(s) below baseline, subscript character(s)
B.3 Ordering according to styles

If ordering by the first through fourth ordering level does not produce a unique sequence, typographical

styles may be taken into consideration as a fifth ordering level.
Styles may be ordered according to Table B.2.
Table B.2 — Order of styles
Position Style name Example
1 roman abcdefghij
2 boldface abcdefghij
3 italic abcdefghij
4 boldface-italic abcdefghij
5 others
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ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Annex C
(informative)
Ordering rules for chemical names
C.1 Background

There are no universally accepted ordering rules for chemical names. The ordering rules of the main

body of this document may be used, if so desired, with the extension of the word-by-word ordering

rules described in Annex A.

However, some indexes and databases, in particular at the Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS), use a

specially designed multiple-key ordering system. The main features of this system are outlined in this

annex.
C.2 Division into three keys
C.2.1 Parent name

The first key consists of the parent name, which normally is all roman letters and space characters,

whether or no
...

ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
ISO/FDIS 12199:2022(E)
Date: 2022-03-02
ISO/TC 37/SC 2/WG 8
Secretariat: SCC
Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and
lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet

Mise en ordre alphabétique des données lexicographiques et terminologiques multilingues

représentées dans l’alphabet latin
2 © ISO 2022 – All rights reserved
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© ISO 2022

All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this

publication may be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, or posting on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested

from either ISO at the address below or ISO’s member body in the country of the requester.

ISO Copyright Office
CP 401 • CH-1214 Vernier, Geneva
Phone: + 41 22 749 01 11
Email: [e-mail]
Published in Switzerland.
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Contents

Foreword .................................................................................................................................................................................. iv

1 Scope .................................................................................................................................................................... 6

2 Normative references .................................................................................................................................... 6

3 Terms and definitions ................................................................................................................................... 7

4 Preparatory procedures ............................................................................................................................... 7

5 First ordering level ......................................................................................................................................... 8

5.1 First-ordering-level values .......................................................................................................................... 8

5.2 First-ordering-level sequence .................................................................................................................... 8

5.3 Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters ........................................................... 9

6 Second ordering level ................................................................................................................................. 10

6.1 Second-ordering-level values .................................................................................................................. 10

6.2 Special Latin letters and letters with diacritical marks ................................................................. 10

7 Third ordering level .................................................................................................................................... 11

7.1 Third-ordering-level values ..................................................................................................................... 11

7.2 Ordering according to capitalization .................................................................................................... 12

8 Fourth ordering level .................................................................................................................................. 12

8.1 Fourth-ordering-level values ................................................................................................................... 12

8.2 Ordering according to special characters ........................................................................................... 12

Annex A (normative) Word-by-word ordering ........................................................................................................ 13

Annex B (informative) Special rules for lexicographical and terminological ordering ............................ 15

Annex C (informative) Ordering rules for chemical names ................................................................................. 16

Annex D (informative) Character repertoire of the Latin alphabet ................................................................. 18

Annex E (informative) Languages using the Latin alphabet ............................................................................... 27

Annex F (informative) Alphabetical sequences and character repertoires ..................................................... 4

Annex G (normative) Formal description of the rules of the main body of this document ..................... 24

Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................................................... 41

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Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards

bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through

ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has

been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations,

governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely

with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described

in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types

of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the

ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent

rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of any patent

rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or on the ISO list of

patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents).

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not

constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions

related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO’s adherence to the World Trade

Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), see
www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html.

This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Language and terminology, Subcommittee

SC 2, Terminology workflow and language coding.

This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO 12199:2000), of which it constitutes a minor

revision. The changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:

— the relationship of this document with other International Standards has been updated and transferred

from the Foreword to the Introduction;
— in Clause 2 and in the Bibliography, the references have been updated;

— ISO/IEC 14651 is cited informatively and therefore has been moved from Clause 2 to the Bibliography;

— in Annexes D, E and F, the Serbian language has been added among the languages using the Latin

alphabet, together with a character set and alphabetical ordering information relating to the Serbian

language,;
— in Annex E, the references to Serbo-Croatian have been deleted.;

— Annex G is cited informatively and therefore has been changed to “(informative)”.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A

complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html.
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Introduction

In the development of international terminologies, both in printed form and in databases, it is essential to

have uniform and internationally recognized rules for the alphabetical ordering of terminological and

lexicographical data, to make these terminologies more easily accessible for the users. In addition, it will

facilitate the interchange of terminological and lexicographical data.
This document complements other International Standards, such as ISO 10241-1.
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Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and
lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet
1 Scope

This document specifies the sequence of characters to be used in the alphabetical ordering of multilingual

terminological and lexicographical data (terms, term elements, or words) represented in the Latin alphabet.

Character sets of languages represented in the Latin alphabet are taken into account insofar as

terminological or lexicographical data have been recorded. Character sets used in internationally

standardized transliteration into Latin script are also taken into account.

The sequence of alphabetical characters given is intended for multilingual purposes only and is not intended

to affect the alphabetical order of any specific language.

The main part of this document specifies letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Normative

annexAnnex A treats word-by-word ordering, which is a widely used alternative to this system.

Informative annexAnnex B gives two additional rules that maycan be useful for lexicographical and

terminological ordering.
Informative annexAnnex C gives ordering rules for chemical names.
Informative annexAnnex D lists the character repertoire of the Latin alphabet.
Informative annexAnnex E lists languages using the Latin alphabet.

Informative annexAnnex F gives alphabetical sequences derived from the sequence specified in this

document for a number of languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Normative annexAnnex G gives a formal description of the rules laid down in the main part of this document

conforming with ISO/IEC 14651.
2 Normative references

The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content constitutes

requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references,

the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.

ISO 1087, Terminology work and terminology science — Vocabulary.

ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993, , Information technology — Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) —

Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane.

NOTE In this Minor Revision of ISO 12199:2000 reference continues to be made to ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993. ISO/IEC

10646-1 and ISO/IEC 10646-2 have since been merged into ISO/IEC 10646.

ISO/IEC 14651, Information technology — International string ordering and comparison — Method for

comparing character strings and description of the common template tailorable ordering.

Cancelled and replaced by ISO/IEC 10646:2020. In this minor revision of ISO 12199:2000, reference continues to be made to

ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993. ISO/IEC 10646-1 and ISO/IEC 10646-2 have since been merged into ISO/IEC 10646:2020.

---------------------- Page: 6 ----------------------
53 Terms and definitions

For the purposepurposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in ISO 1087 (for terminological

concepts ) and the following apply.

ISO and IEC maintain terminology databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:

— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https://www.iso.org/obp
— IEC Electropedia: available at https://www.electropedia.org/
3.1
character

member of a set of elements used for the organization, control or representation of data

3.2
letter

character (3.1) used for writing natural language, often representing a sound in the language

3.3
digit

character (3.1) used to represent the numeric value, or part thereof, of a number

3.4
special character
character (3.1) that is not a letter (3.2) nor a digit (3.3)
EXAMPLE The space character is a special character.
3.5
ligature
character (3.1) resulting from the joining of two or more letters (3.2)

NOTE Note 1 to entry: The resulting character is, in some cases, considered a separate letter.

3.6
polygraph

two or more consecutive letters (3.2) that are regarded as one letter for some purpose

NOTE Note 1 to entry: A polygraph consisting of two or three letters may be referred to as a digraph or a trigraph,

respectively.
3.7
diacritical mark

character (3.1) that is not a letter (3.2) and is placed over, under, or through a letter or a combination of

letters
3.8
ordering

act of bringing strings of characters (3.1) into a well-defined sequence according to a string comparison

specification
64 Preparatory procedures

In the process of alphabetical ordering, character strings are compared according to a set of rules. This

document specifies the set of rules to be used for the ordering, but does not address the means of selection

of relevant character strings, nor any modification of the strings that maycan be needed for a given purpose.

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Consequently, certain preparatory procedures maycan be needed before applying the ordering rules.

Depending on the needs in each individual case, it is possible that:

— the relevant character strings may have to be selected, e.g. relevant terms may have to be extracted from

a corpus,;

— the character strings may have to be modified, e.g. sentence-initial uppercase letters may have to be

changed to lowercase letters, plural form of words may have to be changed to singular form, or;

— leading zeroes or spaces maycan be added, e.g. in lists containing numerals.
Polygraphs are treated as sequences of separate letters.

An application may arrange information into several ordering fields, and determine ranking order with

several separate and independent comparisons. This document only defines a single comparison for one

such field, where the field is a character-string field.

Only the characters that appear in the string and their arrangement are taken into account. Apart from the

ordering rules and passes, no other knowledge about the words in the character string is used. For example,

dictionary information or rules about language syntax, phonetics and semantics are not used.

75 First ordering level
7.15.1 First-ordering-level values

When comparing strings to be ordered, the first-ordering-level values of the strings shall be considered first.

The subsequent ordering-level values need to be considered only if two or more strings have identical first-

ordering-level values.

For multilingual ordering, the following rules shall be applied (see annex AAnnex A shall be applied for

word-by-word ordering):.
7.25.2 First-ordering-level sequence
Digits and letters have the following ordering values:
a) Digits:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

NOTE 1 Sequences of digits will beare ordered from left to right as written, thus generating the following order,

e.g.:for example: 1 10 100 11 110 111 12 19 190 2 21 3.

NOTE 2 Leading zeroes maycan be inserted as a preparatory procedure, e.g. to generate the following order:

0001 0002 0003 0010 0011 0012 0019 0021 0100 0110 0111 0190.
b) Basic letters of the Latin alphabet:
a A b B c C d D e E f F g G h H i I j J k K l L m M n N
o O p P q Q r R s S t T u U v V w W x X y Y z Z þ Þ

NOTE 1 3 This order has been established for use in multilingual environments so as to conflict with as few

individual languages as possible. See informative annex Annex F for examples of deviations from this sequence in

some languages.

Uppercase and lowercase letters shall be treated as equivalent (see clauseClause 7). Letters of the Latin

alphabet with diacritical marks shall be treated as equivalent to the corresponding basic Latin letters

(see clauseClause 6). Special letters of the Latin alphabet shall be treated as equivalent to basic Latin

letters according to Table 1 in 5.3 (see clauseClause 6).
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The Turkish language distinguishes ı/I from i/İ, while other languages have the pair i/I only. To order

multilingual data including Turkish text, the i/I pair shall be expanded as follows:

1: ı/I U0131/U0049 LATIN LETTER DOTLESS I (Turkish)
2: i/I U0131/U0049 LATIN LETTER I (non-Turkish)
3: i/İ U0069/U0130 LATIN LETTER I WITH DOT ABOVE (Turkish)

It should also be noted that, for example, í (U00ED LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH ACUTE) in normal print is

represented as LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I WITH ACUTE. For the purpose of ordering, however, it shall be

treated as equivalent to i (U0069 LATIN SMALL LETTER I) on the first ordering level.

NOTE 2 4 Throughout this document, characters are referenced as UXXXX, where X is any hexadecimal digit and

refers to the position of the character in ISO/IEC 10646-1. Character names are given as in ISO/IEC 10646-1. Most

names of Latin letters start with “LATIN SMALL LETTER …” and “LATIN CAPITAL LETTER …”. When referring to both

lowercase and uppercase letter, the name “LATIN LETTER …” is used. When there is no danger of misinterpretation,

the words “LATIN LETTER” are sometimes omitted.
c) Letters of other alphabets:

Letters of other alphabets follow in the sequences established for each alphabet. The order of non-Latin

alphabets shall be: the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, other alphabets.

NOTE 5 It is outside the scope of this document to establish the sequences for alphabets other than the Latin

alphabet. The Greek alphabet has the following sequence of letters:
α Α β Β γ Γ δ Δ ε Ε ζ Ζ η Η θ Θ ι Ι κ Κ λ Λ μ Μ ν Ν ξ Ξ
ο Ο π Π ρ Ρ σ Σ τ Τ υ Υ φ Φ χ Χ ψ Ψ ω Ω.

All other characters, e.g. punctuation marks, shall be ignored. See clauseClause 8.

7.35.3 Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters

Special Latin letters shall be treated as equivalent to basic letters of the Latin alphabet according to Table 1.

Uppercase and lowercase letters shall be treated as equivalent.
Table 1 — Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters
Position Character name in ISO/IEC 10646-1 Character position for Equivalent to
lowercase/uppercase
in ISO/IEC 10646-1
01 LATIN LETTER AE U00E6 U00C6 ae
02 LATIN LETTER B WITH HOOK U0253 U0181 b
03 LATIN LETTER C WITH HOOK U0188 U0187 c
04 LATIN LETTER D WITH STROKE U0111 U0110 d
05 LATIN LETTER D WITH HOOK U0257 U018A d
06 LATIN LETTER ETH U00F0 U00D0 d
07 LATIN LETTER G WITH HOOK U0260 U0193 g
08 LATIN LETTER H WITH STROKE U0127 U0126 h
09 LATIN LETTER K WITH HOOK U0199 U0198 k
10 LATIN SMALL LETTER KRA U0138 k
11 LATIN LETTER L WITH STROKE U0142 U0141 l
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Position Character name in ISO/IEC 10646-1 Character position for Equivalent to
lowercase/uppercase
in ISO/IEC 10646-1
12 LATIN LETTER ENG U014B U014A n
13 LATIN LETTER O WITH STROKE U00F8 U00D8 o
14 LATIN LIGATURE OE U0153 U0152 oe
15 LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S U00DF ss
16 LATIN LETTER T WITH STROKE U0167 U0166 t
No corresponding uppercase letter.
86 Second ordering level
8.16.1 Second-ordering-level values

If the comparison of two strings results in identical first-ordering-level values, second-ordering-level values

shall be applied according to 6.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
8.26.2 Special Latin letters and letters with diacritical marks

Special Latin letters, that have been treated as equivalent to basic Latin letters according to Table 1, shall be

ordered according to the order in Table 1.
Diacritical marks shall be ordered according to Table 2.

NOTE This order has been established for multilingual environments so as to be in conflict with as few individual

languages as possible. See informative annex Annex F for examples of deviations from this sequence in some languages.

Table 2 — Ordering of diacritical marks
Position Name Position for combining
diacritical mark in
ISO/IEC 10646-1
0000 none —
0100 ACUTE ACCENT U0301
0200 GRAVE ACCENT U0300
0300 BREVE U0306
0301 BREVE AND ACUTE —
0302 BREVE AND GRAVE —
0310 BREVE AND HOOK ABOVE —
0311 BREVE AND TILDE —
0313 BREVE AND DOT BELOW —
0315 BREVE AND COMMA BELOW —
0400 CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT U0302
0401 CIRCUMFLEX AND ACUTE —
0402 CIRCUMFLEX AND GRAVE —
0410 CIRCUMFLEX AND HOOK ABOVE —
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Position Name Position for combining
diacritical mark in
ISO/IEC 10646-1
0411 CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE —
0413 CIRCUMFLEX AND DOT BELOW —
0500 CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT BELOW U032D
0600 CARON U030C
0614 CARON AND CEDILLA —
0700 RING ABOVE U030A
0701 RING ABOVE AND ACUTE —
0800 DIAERESIS U0308
0813 DIAERESIS AND DOT BELOW —
0817 DIAERESIS AND MACRON —
0900 DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT U030B
1000 HOOK ABOVE U0309
1100 TILDE U0303
1200 DOT ABOVE U0307
1300 DOT BELOW U0323
1400 CEDILLA U0327
1500 COMMA ABOVE/BELOW U0313 and U0326
1600 OGONEK U0328
1700 MACRON U0304
1713 MACRON AND DOT BELOW —
1800 MACRON BELOW U0331
1900 PRECEDED BY APOSTROPHE —
2000 FOLLOWED BY APOSTROPHE —
2100 HORN U031B
2101 HORN AND ACUTE —
2102 HORN AND GRAVE —
2110 HORN AND HOOK ABOVE —
2111 HORN AND TILDE —
2113 HORN AND DOT BELOW —
The position of combining comma above and below the base character.
97 Third ordering level
9.17.1 Third-ordering-level values

If the comparison of two strings results in identical first- and second-ordering-level values, third-ordering-

level values shall be applied according to 7.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
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9.27.2 Ordering according to capitalization

A lowercase letter shall be ordered before the corresponding uppercase letter. [See 5.2, item b), first

paragraph after note 1NOTE 3.]

NOTE The terms “lowercase letter” and “uppercase letter” are used for members of the sets “a b c …” and “A B C …”,

respectively. In character names, the naming conventions of ISO/IEC 10646-1 are used. ISO/IEC 10646-1 uses “LATIN

SMALL LETTER” and “LATIN CAPITAL LETTER”, respectively.
108 Fourth ordering level
10.18.1 Fourth-ordering-level values

If the comparison of two strings results in identical first-, second- and third-ordering-level values, fourth-

ordering-level values shall be applied according to 8.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
10.28.2 Ordering according to special characters

Special characters are ordered according to the sequence of the default template of ISO/IEC 14651. For most

special characters, this is the order in which they are listed in ISO/IEC 10646-1.

NOTE In word-by-word ordering (see normative annexAnnex A), the space character and possibly other special

characters maycan have special functions as key separators.
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Annex A
(normative)
Word-by-word ordering
A.1 Principles of word-by-word ordering

As noted in the scopeScope, this document specifies the letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Word-

by-word ordering is a widely used alternative to this system. Table A.1 illustrates the difference between

letter-by-letter ordering and word-by-word ordering.
Table A.1 — Letter-by-letter and word-by-word ordering
Letter-by-letter ordering Word-by-word ordering
ad ad
adhesive ad hoc
ad hoc ad infinitum
adieu adhesive
ad infinitum adieu
adipose adipose
A.2 Multiple-key ordering

Single-key ordering is described in the main body of this document. In multiple-key ordering, all the

ordering rules are applied to one key before they are applied to the next, until all the keys have been

considered or a unique sequence has been established.

NOTE One typical example of multiple-key ordering is a list of delegates to a meeting, where the first key maycan be

the country names, the second key maycan be the delegates’ last names, and the third key maycan be the delegates’ first

names. In this example, if a country has one delegate only, the second key (last names) will not be considered.

A.3 Word-by-word ordering as multiple-key ordering

In word-by-word ordering, space characters, and possibly also by definition other characters, are key

separators. The key-separator characters function as key separators only, and they have no position in the

ordering sequence.

When the character string has been divided into a sequence of keys, the ordering rules of the main body of

this document are invoked for one key at a time.

NOTE 1 In addition to the space characters, some or all punctuation marks maycan be defined as key separators. It

maycan also be useful to define some space characters as key separators, while other space characters remain special

characters within a key. The choices will depend on the language(s) and type of strings to be ordered.

NOTE 2 If space characters and hyphens are defined as key separators, the title of this clause would be split into the

following keys: , where each key is contained

within < and >, and the spaces are added for increased readability.
A.4 Simple word-by-word ordering
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If the text to be ordered using word-by-word ordering contains very few special Latin letters and diacritical

marks, the following extension to the rules in the main body of this document will produce the same or

nearly the same output as the rules described in clauseClause A.3.

On the first ordering level (see 5.2), the space character is added as the first item. Items 1, 2, and 3 in 5.2

then become items 2, 3, and 4. The space character is not treated as a special character on the fourth

ordering level (clausesee Clause 8).

NOTE Depending on the language(s) and type of strings to be ordered, it maycan be useful to treat even other special

characters (e.g. hyphens) in the same way as the space character.
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Annex B
(informative)
Special rules for lexicographical and terminological ordering
B.1 Background

For lexicographical and terminological applications, it maycan sometimes be desirable to add additional

ordering criteria to the rules that are described in the main body of this document.

The features that are described in this annex cannot easily be described in the formalism given in

ISO/IEC 14651.
B.2 Position relative to baseline

It maycan be desirable to distinguish, for example, m2, m , m for ordering purposes. If this is deemed

necessary, it is recommended that this be done on the third ordering level (see clauseClause 7) combined

with capitalization.

The ordering value of any given character based on its position relative to the baseline may be determined

according to Table B.1.
Table B.1 — Position relative to baseline
1 character(s) on baseline
2 character(s) above baseline, superscript character(s)
3 character(s) below baseline, subscript character(s)
B.3 Ordering according to styles

If ordering by the first through fourth ordering level does not produce a unique sequence, typographical

styles may be taken into consideration as a fifth ordering level.
Styles may be ordered according to Table B.2.
Table B.2 — Order of styles
Position Style name Example
1 roman abcdefghij
2 boldface abcdefghij
3 italic abcdefghij
4 boldface-italic abcdefghij
5 others
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Annex C
(informative)
Ordering rules for chemical names
C.1 Background

There are no universally accepted ordering rules for chemical names. The ordering rules of the main body of

this document may be used, if so desired, with the extension of the word-by-word ordering rules described

in annexAnnex A.

However, some indexes and databases, in particular at the Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS), use a specially

2) 2

designed multiple-key ordering system. The main features of this system are outlined below. in this annex.

C.2 Division into three keys
C.2.1 Parent name

The first key consists of the parent name, which normally will beis all roman letters and space characters,

whether or not interrupted by italic letters, Greek letters, digits or special characters (e.g. punctuation).

C.2.2 Initial locants

The second key consists of initial locants, being all characters before the first roman letter.

C.2.3 Other locants

The third key consists of all non-initial locants, being all remaining characters.

NOTE The name “2-Butanone-1,1,1-d , 3,3-dimethyl” is divided into three keys as follows: <2-

> <-1,1,1-d , 3,3->.
C.3 Ordering rules within each key

The first key is ordered according to the rules of the main body of this document.

In the second and third keys, the following order is used:

— letters of the Latin alphabet (which will beis in italic), in the order specified in 5.2, item b);

— letter of the Greek alphabet, in the order given in 5.2, item c);
— numerals, in the order of the numeric value.
C.4 Output

Table C.1 shows ordered output from the rules that are described in this annex compared with output from

the rules of the main body of this document.

For further details, consult Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS), P.O. Box 3012, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.

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