Do both sentences mean the same thing?
- Please, would you order the papers by number?
- Please, would you sort the papers by number?
Learn English – Are “sort” and “order” interchangeable
differenceword-difference
differenceword-difference
Do both sentences mean the same thing?
Best Answer
"Sort" and "order" are generally interchangeable, and in your example, they are perfect synonyms. The one difference is that "order" can only be used for things that actually have a pre-defined ordering, like alphabetical or numeric. I could ask you to sort buttons by color, but asking you to order them by color wouldn't make much sense.
An ordering also implies an overall structure where each item has a specific relationship to the items before and after it. At the post office, for example, they'll sort letters by their destination, in which case they only care about each letter's category but not its relationship to other letters. The postman may then order letters for his delivery route, in which case each letter's relationship to the others is important.