Alphabetical Order of Words

As the name suggests, the alphabetical order of words section in a logical reasoning exam demands from a candidate the arrangement of words on the basis of their appearance in a dictionary. The candidates are required to arrange the given words according to the order in which the first letters of each word appear in the english language.

For example:

Arrange the given words in alphabetical order:

ship, boat, car

Here, the words will be rearranged to ‘boat, car and ship’ since ‘b’ comes first alphabetically compared to the first letters of ship and car, so on and so forth.

Types of Alphabetical order questions

Even though the concept stays the same, there are multiple types of questions asked in this section:

• Quibble

These questions do not follow any set of rules, so each question has to be understood in isolation. The questions asked are based on the series of the appearance of the alphabet. For a better understanding, here is an example:

Which of the given letters appears in the fifth position to the right side of the 12th letter in the alphabet series?

a) C 

b) Q

c) H

 d) G

We first need to find the 12th letter in the alphabet series to solve this question. Upon reciting the series of the alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L), we find out that ‘L’ is the 12th letter in the series. Once we have this information, we will now move five letters to the right of ‘L’, which will take us to (M, N, O, P, Q) ‘Q’. Hence, option B is the correct answer to this question.

• Letter Gap based questions

The questions in this category are based purely on your understanding of the alphabet and logic.

Example:

In the word ‘alcohol’, how many letters have the same number of letters between them as in the alphabet series?

a) 1

 b) 3

c) 5 

d) None of the above

Here, the letters ‘A’ and ‘C’ have one letter between them ‘, L’, which is the case in the alphabet series where they have the letter ‘B’ between them. None of the other words has the same number of letters as in the alphabet series, so the correct option here would be ‘option a’.

• Word formation

In word-formation questions, the candidates will be provided with a set of jumbled words. They are required to form a coherent word using the given jumbled letters.

For example:

If the jumbled letters EFOEFC form a beverage once rearranged, what will the first and last letters be?

a) E,O 

b) C, E

c) C,F 

d) O, C

If we rearrange the given jumbled letters, the name of the beverage will be coffee. And the first and the last letter of coffee are ‘C’ and ‘E’, respectively, so ‘option B’ will be the correct answer here.

• Alphabetical order

These questions are the most common and basic types of questions in the section. The question demands you to find out which letter comes first on the basis of its alphabetical order.

For example:

Arrange the following words based on whose initial letter comes first according to the alphabetical order.

a) Game 

b) Try

c) Open 

d) Light

When reciting the alphabets, ‘G’ comes first, followed by ‘L’, ‘O’ and then ‘T’. Based on this knowledge, ‘game’ will come first, then ‘light’, ‘open’ comes third and ‘try’ will be the last word in the rearrangement.

Rules to follow during alphabetical order questions

Even though arranging the alphabet in order looks easy, there are certain rules that a candidate needs to keep in mind. The initial letter of a word is what a candidate needs to focus on. For example, if there are two words, ‘breathe’, and ‘giraffe’, the two letters ‘b’ and ‘g’ are what will ensure the order in which they’ll be arranged. If two words have the same initial, the candidate would need to focus on the second letter of the words to find out in which order they will be arranged.

Practice questions for Alphabetical Order of Words

Ques 1) How many coherent and meaningful words can you form using the first, second, fourth and seventh letter of the word ‘ABSOLUTE’?

a) two

 b) four

c) five 

d) one 

Ques 2) How many letters come between the 9th letter from the left and the 6th letter from the right in the English alphabet?

a) four

 b) eleven

c) fifteen

 d) nine

Ques 3) Arrange the words on the basis of their appearance in the dictionary.

a) Peace 

b) Care

c) Diamond 

d) Kite

Ques 4) Based on the dictionary, arrange these words in order.

a) Feminine 

b) Feral

c) Feature 

d) Free

Conclusion

Alphabetical order of word questions is a subsection in the logical and reasoning exams. In these questions, the candidates are given letters or words that need to be arranged. This arrangement is made alphabetically. This means that the candidates must rearrange the set of letters or words based on their appearance in the dictionary. There are five kinds of alphabetical order of word questions: quibble (the position of the alphabet in the series), letter gap based (according to the gap between the letters), word formation (forming new words using letters) and alphabetical order (which letter comes first in the alphabet).