dont know nomenclature

when u are on the page for editing your own book -

to the right (of title?) is a tiny rectangle that is empty.

i ignore it always. but sometimes i find a book comes in- with the number 5.

once this rectangle is triggered by magical imps outside my control. it is never empty again. the most that u can do to remove the 5- is to get to - start screen? i forget the words.

i recall someone describing this, once to someone else, and it almost made sense, but then i forgot as i dont use it.

lately, the magical imps have been working overtime, and i see a great many 5's.

does this rectangle serve a purpose? that i can understand?

does it matter to- people such as i- that are probably never going to be particular enough to need to use it - that the number 5 keeps popping up?

apologies in advance - i fear i will never grasp this one.

This number is the "sort character" field for the title. In titles that start with "The" it will be 5, to exclude the first four characters (i.e. t, h, e, space) from alphabetic sorting by title.

You can manually edit it, but for English titles there is generally no need to do so.

It controls which character the title is sorted on alphabetically. '5' means the title is sorted on the fifth character (including spaces), which is common for English-language titles that begin with 'The'. For example, The Hobbit would be sorted under the fifth character, 'H'.

In many cases this is done automatically, but you can change the sort character manually if you need to.

Does the book title begin with "The"? That number 5 is telling the system how many characters to skip before sorting the book in alphabetical order by title.

So, The Story of the Stone sorts under "Story" and not "The"

This helps with sorting your catalog alphabetically by title. Usually, you sort by the first letter of the title, so it's blank--that means the sorting will start with the first letter.

With book titles that start with "The," generally you'd want to sort by the first letter of the word following "The." The 5 tells the sort to start with the fifth character, omitting The+space following.

You can choose a different number by clicking the box to change how the sort is done.

With book titles that start with "A", to omit the A from the sort, you'd select 3 to start sorting on the third character.

So if you had three books, for example:
I Can Read the Alphabet! ()
A Reading Primer (3)
The Alphabet (5)

If you clicked on sort alphabetically by title in your catalog, you'd get the following list:
The Alphabet
I Can Read the Alphabet!
A Reading Primer

I hope this makes sense.

okay-

that actually makes sense. i'm sure i will never use it- but at least i know why, now.

thx

Please read the description for this group.

>7 MarthaJeanne: sorry dont know how i got here. i thought i was in library thing catchall

Note that if you owned "A is for Alibi" then you might want to change that value from 3 to Start.

Thank you for these replies! I always thought the number meant "sort starting with word #2 or 3 etc"
Now I know it means characters

FWIW, the new version of the book editor uses a graphical representation for this instead of the pure-number selector. It's much easier to understand what's going on with that setting. It's already used if you edit your books within the LT mobile app and some variation will be used here once we update the work page.