Skip to content
Toolore

Text Tools

Text Sorter

Sort a list of lines. Alphabetical sorting handles accented characters properly — Ångström lands next to Apple rather than after Zebra — and numeric sorting treats the lines as numbers, so 10 comes after 9 rather than before it.

Note

Everything happens in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.

How to use this tool

  1. Paste your list, one item per line.
  2. Choose how to sort: alphabetically, by line length, numerically, or shuffled.
  3. Choose ascending or descending order.

Worked examples

Why numeric sorting exists

  1. Sorting 9, 10, 100 alphabetically gives 10, 100, 9
  2. Sorting them numerically gives 9, 10, 100

Alphabetical sorting compares character by character, so '1' sorts before '9'.

Notes and limitations

  • Alphabetical sorting uses your browser's language rules, so accented and non-Latin characters are ordered the way a reader expects rather than by their code point.
  • Numeric sorting reads the number at the start of each line. Lines that do not begin with a number sink to the bottom rather than being treated as zero.
  • Blank lines are removed before sorting.
  • Shuffle uses a Fisher-Yates shuffle, so every possible order is equally likely.
  • Everything runs in your browser. Your text is never uploaded to a server, which matters when what you are working on is a draft, a client list or anything else you would rather not send anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Why did my numbers sort in the wrong order?

Alphabetical sorting compares text character by character, so 10 comes before 9 because '1' comes before '9'. Switch to numeric sorting.

How are accented characters sorted?

By your browser's locale rules, which place them where a reader would expect. A raw code-point sort would push every accented word to the end of the list.

Does sorting remove duplicates?

No, the two are separate. Use Remove Duplicate Lines first if you want both.

Related tools