Editing Collation (section)

==Radical-and-stroke sorting==
:''See also [[Chinese characters]] and [[Chinese character orders]]''
Another form of collation is '''radical-and-stroke sorting''', used for non-alphabetic writing systems such as the [[hanzi]] of [[Chinese language|Chinese]] and the [[kanji]] of [[Japanese language|Japanese]], whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by convention. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called [[radical (Chinese character)|radicals]] in Chinese and logographic systems derived from Chinese. Characters are then grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation. For example, the Chinese character 妈 (meaning "mother") is sorted as a six-stroke character under the three-stroke primary radical 女 (meaning "woman").

The radical-and-stroke system is cumbersome compared to an alphabetical system in which there are a few characters, all unambiguous. The choice of which components of a logograph comprise separate radicals and which radical is primary is not clear-cut. As a result, logographic languages often supplement radical-and-stroke ordering with alphabetic sorting of a phonetic conversion of the logographs. For example, the kanji word ''Tōkyō'' (東京) can be sorted as if it were spelled out in the Japanese characters of the [[hiragana]] syllabary as "to-u-ki-<sub>yo</sub>-u" (とうきょう), using the conventional sorting order for these characters.{{citation needed|date=October 2012}}

In addition, Chinese characters can also be sorted by [[stroke-based sorting]]. In Greater China, [[surname stroke order]]ing is a convention in some official documents where people's names are listed without hierarchy.