The tyranny of the alphabet

A 2006 study by professors at Stanford and CalTech found that faculty members "with earlier surname initials are significantly more likely to receive tenure at top ten economics departments. ... a likely reason is that academic papers by economists typically list the authors' names alphabetically."

A.J. Jacobs, quoting a Slate article in It's All Relative

Dr. Edgar Whan

I seem to be thinking about Edgar Whan quite a bit lately. Dr. Whan was a professor of English at Ohio University when I was there in the Sixties. After he died six years ago, his obituary said he had been voted Professor of the Year so many times that in 1982 he was named Professor of the Year in Perpetuity. I guess it fits, for he continues to teach me.

I thought about him when I reviewed Thomas C. Foster's book How to Read Poetry Like a Professor (March 8, 2019). Foster's wit when discussing challenging literary subjects reminded me of my favorite English professor, who made every class so much fun you didn't realize you were learning stuff.

Then I thought of him March 22 when I argued in this blog that teaching the Bible in public schools might actually be a good idea. The class I took with Dr. Whan was called The Bible as Literature, which examined much of the Bible as significant works of literature. He was a devout Christian, and I often noticed him in the local Presbyterian church when I attended there, yet in class his focus was always on literature, not proselytizing.

Now Dr. Whan comes to mind again when I think about what Slate magazine called "the tyranny of the alphabet." On the first day of class Whan seated all his students in reverse alphabetical order, the ZYXW's in the front and the DCBA's in the back. He said that all his life he had been at the end of lists, in the rear of lines and in the back of classrooms. Now he would have his revenge. He was kidding, but not kidding much. I am sure anyone whose surname falls near the end of the alphabet feels much the same way.

My surname starts with M, placing me somewhere near the middle no matter which way names are listed. Yet I have often thought it odd not that names are usually put in alphabetical order but that this way of listing them is widely considered to be the fair way of doing it.  At the beginning of movies, for example, the stars have often been listed in alphabetical order so that nobody gets top billing over anyone else. But this is nonsense, for Woody Allen always gets a higher billing than Christopher Walken, say, or Sigourney Weaver. Had Edgar Whan ever been a Hollywood producer, we know which order the names would be listed in his movies.

In telephone directories, on the fiction shelves of bookstores and libraries, in lists of graduates or club members, in fact almost anywhere names are listed, they are going to be in alphabetical order, meaning the Allens and Abbotts are going to come long before the Walkens, the Weavers and the Whans. And pity the poor Zimmermans. It’s all about convenience. It’s the most sensible way to list names, but it certainly isn’t fair.