sort command does not deal with blanks correctly

[byron]

in Solaris, for example (and in perl, etc.)
ae
ac
a l
az
sorts to
a l
ac
ae
az

which is correct, since the space character is lexigraphically less than any
alphanumeric character

but gnu sort (linux) seems to ignore the blanks entirely, resulting in
ac
ae
a l
az

getting a different result is a real pain!
Is there any option that makes 'sort' behave as the man page claims it does?