OK, I'm going to answer my own question -- it was probably so obvious that nobody else wanted answer such an easy one!
I simply needed to apply <filter class="solr.PatternReplaceFilterFactory" pattern="([^a-z])" replacement="" replace="all" /> after <filter class="solr.PatternReplaceFilterFactory" pattern="^the\s" replacement="" replace="first" /> <filter class="solr.PatternReplaceFilterFactory" pattern="^a\s" replacement="" replace="first" /> instead of before, as I had it originally. Otherwise "the\s" and "a\s" is never matched! Hope this maybe helps somebody else... -- View this message in context: http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Sorting-by-article-title-tp3396743p3397694.html Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.