How do you alphabetize my phone contacts

One possibility is that they are being sorted by first name instead of last name (or vice versa) when you are expecting the other sort order.

Go to Settings > Contacts and choose the "Sort Order". Also note that you separately choose the "Display Order."

Note that they might be sorted by Last Name but displayed by First Name first, for example, and that can make the display a bit confusing.

Scottb12 wrote:

setting up my phone contacts on my Iphone13 for the first time and the contacts do not alphabetize

Have you quit the app and relaunched it?

Have you restarted the phone

Contacts>List do you have multiple List, make a change here.

List>All iCloud (?)

The current stable release of iOS including bug fixes, security updates is iOS 17.5.1

Update your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support