Is there any way to use ORDER BY in such a way as to have it ignore
words such as "the", "a", "an", and the like?

brian

[snip]
Is there any way to use ORDER BY in such a way as to have it ignore
words such as "the", "a", "an", and the like?
[/snip]

I haven't tested this but you might be able to do it with a little REGEX
and a HAVING clause;

SELECT REGEX(words) AS undesirable
FROM table
HAVING stuff <> undesirable