ORDER BY puts the rows in order

Rows come back in no promised order, so if you want a first or a last, you have to ask. ORDER BY sorts by the column you name. Left alone it sorts ascending — smallest number first, A before Z. Add DESC after that column name to sort descending instead. Sorting happens last, on whatever rows survived the filters.

A tiny example

In plain English: Show me every student's name and score, highest score first.

SELECT name, score
FROM students
ORDER BY score DESC;

What comes back

name	score
Nia	98
Theo	91
Ravi	87

Same rows as a plain SELECT — just sorted so the highest score comes first.

Related SQL lessons

LIMITLIMIT keeps only the first few rows

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