>The SQL SELECT ORDER BY treats "W" and "V" characters as equal. Is there any way to make it understand that they are different characters?

What is your collation? You can specify collation in the ORDER BY clause. (in SQL Server)

BTW, it doesn't treat W and V characters as equal, not with the collation I use, at least.

Select Fields from myTable ORDER BY Field1 COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS