Q. How do I put work cited in alphabetical order?

Microsoft Word has an A-Z sort function [Google Docs does not natively], BUT!

• If you have any sources without authors that start with an article title inside "quote marks," those are all going to float to the top of the list, since the punctuation mark gets sorted before the alphabet starts.
• It's common to ignore leading articles like The, A, An for alphabetization purposes (i.e. The Hunger Games falls under H rather than T), which Word's tool also does not support.

Most of the time, it works pretty well. Just make manual adjustments to move around anything that doesn't land in the right spot (i.e. cut/paste).

Alphabetization Rules

MLA (per 9th ed., 5.124-5.130)

• Alphabetize letter-by-letter by whatever comes first in the citation, whether a last name, title, organization, or description.
• When you have 2 sources with 2 authors, and both sources start with the same name, alphabetize by the last name of the second author. (E.g. Smith, John, and Jane Doe would precede Smith, John, and Alice Roe. Doe/Roe for alphabetical order, not Alice/Jane.)
• Ignore punctuation and spaces. Diacritics and accent marks are ignored. (E.g. é counts the same as e)
• Ignore A, An, The, or other articles at the start of titles, and their equivalents in other languages (e.g. La, Los, Le, Les, etc).
• Omit A, An, The, and similar for corporate/group authors. (E.g. The Beatles would be an author in a citation only as Beatles.)
• If a title begins with a number, alphabetize as though the number were written out. (E.g. 1914 alphabetizes like Nineteen Fourteen.)

APA (per 7th ed., 9.44-9.49)

• Alphabetize starting with the first author's surname list. "Nothing precedes something," so Loft, V. H. comes before Loftus, E. F., even though E comes before V.
• When you have multiple sources by the same single author, order by publication date. References with no date (n.d.) come first, then chronological years, and anything not published yet (in press) last.
  • Again, nothing precedes something, so work by a single author will come before a source they coauthored with someone. (e.g. Smith, R. will be before Smith, R., & Jones, K.)
  • Sources with multiple authors and the same first author will be sorted based on the second author's surname, or if necessary, the third, and so on. (E.g. Smith, R. & Jones, K. will come before Smith, R. & Roe, A.)
• Ignore punctuation and spaces. 
• Ignore A, An, The, or other articles at the start of titles.

CMOS (per 18th ed., 13.6913.71)

• CMOS 18 recommends the "word-by-word" style of alphabetizing, rather than "letter-by-letter." (So e.g. Fernan Gomez, Fernando comes before Fernandez, Angelines in word-by-word, but the opposite would be true in letter-by-letter.)
• When you have multiple sources by the same single author, start alphabetizing by the work titles.
• Nothing precedes something: a work by a single author will come before another work with the same leading author and a coauthor. (E.g. Smith, John will come before Smith, John, and Jane Doe.)
  • If this comes up multiple times, alphabetize the coauthored works according to the second author's last name.
• If a title begins with a number, alphabetize as though the number were written out. (E.g. 1914 alphabetizes like Nineteen Fourteen.)
• Ignore A, An, The, or other articles at the start of titles.