DW reported that words with initial apostrophes should be sorted to the beginning (so apostrophes should only be discarded for the purposes of sorting if they're not initial). Went back to my data and discovered that somehow, initial apostrophes had been deleted in the process of getting the data out of Access. Went back through that process again, and got the data out correctly; then, after much wrestling with oXygen, which since 12.1 came out has shown an alarming tendency to crash and freeze with out-of-memory errors, I got a new sort order and sent it off for vetting.

If the order is correct, then all that remains is to learn from AW what format he wants the data in.