List Sorting Problem

[ZZTurn]

If you adjust your keyfunc a little bit then you can achieve desired result.

Depending how agressive you would like to be in lowering you can use str.casefold or str.lower.

...and don't use list as a name.

>>> data = [['pencil', 'writing implement'], ['asteroid', 'space body'], ['Arctic', 'northern pole']]
>>> sorted(data, key=lambda pair: pair[0].casefold())
[['Arctic', 'northern pole'], ['asteroid', 'space body'], ['pencil', 'writing implement']]