The Registry Drawer
The records office of a district education board keeps one alphabetical registry of supplier and personnel folders. The office files letter by letter: punctuation, spaces and hyphens are ignored, abbreviations are filed as if spelled out in full, numerals are filed before letters, and - per a standing office rule - 'Mc' is filed as if written 'Mac'. A new clerk, Ritu, has filed eight folders in this order: MacAllister, J.; McAdams, R.; Okafor, N.; O'Brien, S.; Saint-James, L.; St. Clair, M.; van Dyke, P.; Van Der Berg, H. Her supervisor objects that two folders are out of place. Ritu insists her order is correct because 'C comes before A' and because 'Mc should be filed exactly as it is written, not as Mac'.
1. State the correct filing order for the eight folders and show the letter-by-letter comparison that decides each position.
Read the worked answer
Rule engine: write each name as a string with no spaces, hyphens or apostrophes; expand abbreviations; apply Mc = Mac.
- McAdams →
MACADAMS - MacAllister →
MACALLISTER - O'Brien →
OBRIEN - Okafor →
OKAFOR - St. Clair →
SAINTCLAIR - Saint-James →
SAINTJAMES - Van Der Berg →
VANDERBERG - van Dyke →
VANDYKE
Decisive comparisons:
MACADAMSvsMACALLISTER- identical through M-A-C-A; next letters are D vs L, so McAdams precedes MacAllister.OBRIENvsOKAFOR- B before K at position 2.SAINTCLAIRvsSAINTJAMES- C before J.VANDERBERGvsVANDYKE- V-A-N-D agree; next letters E vs Y.
Correct order: McAdams, R. → MacAllister, J. → O'Brien, S. → Okafor, N. → St. Clair, M. → Saint-James, L. → Van Der Berg, H. → van Dyke, P.
The two misplaced folders are MacAllister (sits first but belongs second) and Okafor (sits fourth but belongs after O'Brien). The supervisor is right.
2. Ritu's stated reasoning is wrong even where her result is right. Identify which filing convention her drawer order actually follows, show why 'C comes before A' is a false justification, and state what changes when the office Mc = Mac rule is applied.
Read the worked answer
What her order actually follows. MacAllister before McAdams is the result of filing Mc exactly as written. Comparing MACALLISTER and MCADAMS, the disagreement occurs at position 2: A vs C, and A precedes C. So the name beginning Mac wins - not because C precedes A.
Her justification is inverted. She has the alphabet backwards: in M-C vs M-A the deciding letters are C and A, and A comes first. A clerk who reaches the right drawer by a wrong rule will not reproduce it on the next batch.
What the office rule changes. Expanding Mc to Mac makes the two strings MACADAMS and MACALLISTER, which agree for four letters and split at D vs L. McAdams now precedes MacAllister - the exact reverse of Ritu's drawer.
Practical point: this is precisely why a written filing rule exists. Two equally defensible conventions give two different answers, so the only correct action is to apply the office's stated convention and record it, not to fall back on personal habit.
3. Two more folders arrive: '3-M Office Supplies Ltd' and 'Saint-Clair, D.' Where does each belong relative to the eight, and what problem does the second one create?
Read the worked answer
'3-M Office Supplies Ltd' begins with a numeral, and the office rule files numerals before letters. It goes at the very front of the sequence, ahead of every M name, in the numerals block, sub-arranged by numeric value (1, 2, 3, …). It is not filed under 'T' for 'Three' and it is not filed with the M names because 'M' happens to appear in it.
'Saint-Clair, D.' → SAINTCLAIR, which is character-for-character identical to STCLAIR expanded, i.e. to SAINTCLAIR from 'St. Clair, M.'
The problem: an exact tie. The rule gives no priority between them, so the clerk must not invent one (for example, putting the hyphenated spelling after Saint-James, or ranking 'St.' before 'Saint'). Both belong in the same position - immediately before Saint-James - and the tie is broken by the next filing element (given name or account number), with a cross-reference slip in the drawer so a searcher finds the pair together.