In many situations, lists of page titles or user names are sorted alphabetically by MediaWiki. It is also possible to use JavaScript to sort lists of data that are included in page text.
Sort order
When lists are sorted alphabetically by MediaWiki, the order of characters is the same as the order of Unicode code points. That is, the usable character that comes first in the Unicode sequence (the space character) will be ranked highest in sorted lists; when an entry in the list begins with a space, that entry is likely to be at the top of the sorted list (unless another entry in the list begins with more than one consecutive space, of course).
Some more common characters are ordered as follows (in descending order):
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_'
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«®¯°±²³´µ•¸¹º»¼½¾¿
ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
ĀāĂ㥹ĆćĈĉĊċČčĎďĐđĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıIJijĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋ
ŌōŎŏŐőŒœŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšŢţŤťŦŧŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽžſ
ǺǻǼǽǾǿ΄΅Ά·ΈΉΊΌΎΏΐ
ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩΪΫάέήίΰ
αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρςστυφχψωϊϋόύώ
Categories
Categories are sorted different from other lists. How exactly they are sorted depends on the configuration of the wiki, via $wgCategoryCollation. The default since MediaWiki 1.17 is the Unicode code point order like above, but with all the lowercase letters turned into uppercase letters. More complex orderings are also possible.
Sorting in pages
When a list of entries is included in a table on a page, you can use JavaScript to make the table 'sortable'. To do this, just add the "sortable" class to the table declaration:
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Fruit !! Price
|-
| Apples || £0.95
|-
| Oranges || £0.85
|-
| Pears || £1.15
|}
Which produces the following output:
| Fruit | Price |
|---|---|
| Apples | £0.95 |
| Oranges | £0.85 |
| Pears | £1.15 |
By clicking on the buttons in the cell headers, the entries can be sorted by the value in that column, in either ascending or descending order.
Specifying a sort key
Depending on the wiki, data-sort-value can be used to specify a sort key.
Example:
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Name and Surname
! Height
|-
|data-sort-value="Smith, John"| John Smith
| 1.85
|-
|data-sort-value="Ray, Ian"| Ian Ray
| 1.89
|-
|data-sort-value="Bianchi, Zachary"| Zachary Bianchi
| 1.72
|-
! Average:
| 1.82
|}
gives:
| Name and Surname | Height |
|---|---|
| John Smith | 1.85 |
| Ian Ray | 1.89 |
| Zachary Bianchi | 1.72 |
| Average: | 1.82 |
Sorting in categories
Pages in categories are sorted by their title. This can be overridden by a sort key, see Categories#Sort_key or the DEFAULTSORT magic word.