Alphabetize the "Works Cited" (bibliography) page by the first item that appears in the citation. Often, the author's last name appears as the first item. Analyze similar last names letter by letter; you would position MacAllister before McAuley. For identical last names, use the same letter by letter approach, going on to the first name: "Smith, James" would precede "Smith, Sharon."
Analyze the first major words in a title for a source without an author. For a magazine or newspaper article, enclose the title in quotation marks and ignore the "a," "an" and "the" at the beginning of the article name. For example, the article title "The Dating Game" would precede "Dating Power." Going letter by letter, the article "The Baby Boomers" comes before "Baby Boomers Retiring."
Assume that numerals at the beginning of a citation have become words. For example, alphabetize the article title "1990: A Decade of Change" as if it began "Nineteen-Ninety." This date would precede an author with the last name of Norman.
Cite two or more articles or books by the same author by alphabetizing the titles attributed to the author. For example, if James Spengler wrote "The History of the Civil War," it would precede his book entitled "The Vietnam War." In the second citation, the author's name would not reappear; instead, three hyphens (---) would replace his name. If the author acted as an editor or translator in a subsequent work, use the abbreviations ed. and trans. after the hyphens.
Treat all types of citations equally as you alphabetize. Do not isolate personal interviews from magazines or from books. For example, a personal interview (Baker, Jane. Personal Interview. 12 Mar. 2011) would appear after a book by "Anderson, Mary" but before the author of a magazine article by "Bullock, Scott." Similarly, a citation without an author ("A Capital Idea") would appear after the Bullock citation in this list.