checking if a string is in alphabetical order in python

Question

I've put together the following code to check if a string/word is alphabetically ordered:

def isInAlphabeticalOrder(word):
    word1=sorted(word)
    word2=[]
    for i in word:
        word2.append(i)
    if word2 == word1:
        return True
    else:
        return False

but I feel like there must be a more efficient way (fewer lines of code) to check other than turning the strings into lists. Isn't there a operand to sort strings alphabetically without turning each char into a list? Can anyone suggest a more efficient way?

Answer 1

Several answers have already addressed the actual string comparison. But I want to add a bit about your return logic.

It is common for beginners to write code like:

if something == somethingElse:
  return True
else:
  return False

That code can always be simplified like this:

return something == somethingElse

If that code doesn't make sense at first it reads as, "Compare something to SomethingElse, and return the result of the comparison".

Answer 2

This is the easiest:

def alphabetical(word):
    return list(word) == sorted(word)