I wish there were an option in FMP's 'Sort' feature that would alphabetize a text field in the standard library manner that omits "A, An and "The" -- and perhaps allow the user to add other initial words to ignore.

This would seem to be a fairly common need!

Wickerman

But there is such an option.

Create a calculated field that checks the first word of a field and if it meets your "A", "An", "The" test then omits that word (or appends it to the end of the field with an appropriate comma and space) and sort on that.