UK TeX FAQ -- question label sortbib

### Sorting lists of citations

BibTeX has a sorting function, and most BibTeX styles sort the citation list they produce; most people find this desirable.

However, it is perfectly possible to write a `thebibliography` environment that looks as if it came from BibTeX, and many people do so (in order to save time in the short term).

The problem arises when `thebibliography`-writers decide their citations need to be sorted. A common misapprehension is to insert `\``bibliographystyle{alpha}` (or similar) and expect the typeset output to be sorted in some magical way. BibTeX doesn't work that way! - if you write `thebibliography`, you get to sort its contents. BibTeX will only sort the contents of a `thebibliography` environment when it creates it, to be inserted from a `.bbl` file by a `\``bibliography` command.

This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=sortbib