ls command not alphabetical output

[Kevin Klein.Osowski]

For some time now I have noticed this, but havnt given it much thought.
However it has become a problem now.  The ls -a command does not give an
alphabetically sorted list of files, sorted by file name.  An example
would be:

.acrorc
.aliases
communicator
.cshrc

The alphabetical sorting by name would put anything with a '.' together,
and then sort the next letter of each entry.  Either the '.' would come
first or last, depending on where the writer decided it fit
alphabetically.  Following that, would be names without the '.', never
intermixed.  This used to work, I know it.  It appears that for some
reason the '.' is being ignored and sorting is only being done on letters
and numbers etc.  This is a pretty obvious mistake, so I am betting it was
intentional.  What gives?

I am using ls version 4.5.3 with glibc-2.3.2 on x86 redhat 9.

Kevin