When it comes to artists with initials (BT, REM, UB40, etc), should their artist sort name contain a dot after each letter or not? I haven’t tried it out as I don’t want to mess with the data, but I’d imagine this might make a difference when it comes to their alphabetisation. As in, does BT come before or after The Beatles, and do REM come before or after Rage Against the Machine? With the dots separating the characters, it would theoretically be possible for each user to decide for themselves whether to make use of them or not. But I’m probably overthinking things yet again.
As far as sorting goes…
In the case of R.E.M., I believe the system would keep it R.E.M., which is a different case than B.A. Johnston, which gets sorted Johnson, B.A.
Alphabetically, R.E.M. comes before REM, but I don’t know where it would fall in regards to Rambone.
UB40 does not use dots.
.
The one thing I would like to point out (to you and any future readers that may come across this): Check multiple sources before using/changing names with punctuation. Some artists spell their name one way, but the press spells it their own way. And “various artist” or compilation albums may not use the correct name either.
The Beatles is a different band than Beatles, but both get written both ways. And original albums for 'Nita, Rita, and Ruby use the ’ because it is short for Anita, but future releases refer to her as Nita, with the '.
