Sorted in order of appearance

Question

Is there a single word to describe when something is sorted in "order of appearance"?

Bibliographies are often sorted like this. Names of actors/actresses in a movie sometimes are, too.

This is in contrast to how an index is usually sorted [ie alphabetically].

As an example, I might say:

The definitions below are given in _ order.

sorted: organized, arranged

appearance: the act of becoming visible

bibliography: a list of books referred to in a scholarly work

alphabetically: ordering where strings are placed in order based on the position of characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet

Answer 1

I tried to look for some examples; here are some from the "ShareLaTeX knowledge base." Often there are index numbers in bibliographies like this; in that case, you could say it is "in numeric order." (the term is used this way here: Biblatex bibliography styles, and here: Tips on Writing a Thesis in LaTeX) In fact, since you did not use any kind of in-line citations connecting your definitions to the previous occurrences of the word, it took me a minute or two to realize what you were doing in your question.

The default behavior listed on this page for the "none" sorting option describes this by saying "entries are processed in citation order." That term is also used in this question: Sort thebibliography by citation order. I don't know if it's used outside of the TeX community.

As others have mentioned, it's common to use a phrase to describe this, even when in explicit contrast with "alphabetic" (Example: "how could Mellel know if the order should be alphabetic or by order of occurrence?" found on a forum about Mellel) and an extra word or two seems in my opinion a small price to pay for increased clarity.

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Example of how your question could be written if the definitions were listed in numerical order:

Is there a single word to describe when something is sorted¹ in "order of appearance"²?

Bibliographies³ are often sorted like this. Names of actors/actresses in a movie sometimes are, too.

This is in contrast to how an index is usually sorted [ie alphabetically⁴].

As an example, I might say:

The definitions below are given in numerical order.

1. sorted: organized, arranged

2. appearance: the act of becoming visible

3. bibliography: a list of books referred to in a scholarly work

4. alphabetically: ordering where strings are placed in order based on the position of characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet

Answer 2

I believe it would be more commonly worded as "listed in order of appearance", rather than "sorted".

Google Ngram seems to agree. "Sorted in order of appearance" is not found.

But I'm not aware of a single word for this kind of sorting.

Answer 3

If you treat appearances as time dependent events, you are listing the things according to their associated event times.

This implies the order is chronological.

: arranged in the order that things happened or came to be
_{Merriam-Webster}

However, I would find it strange for someone to describe it that way. Order of appearance seems clear and well understood.

If a film has an ensemble cast with no clear lead role, it is traditional to bill the participants alphabetically or in the order of their on-screen appearance.
_Wikipedia