Final answer:
To set the sort order to descending, use a sort function and specify descending order, such as 'ORDER BY column_name DESC' in SQL or 'sorted(list, reverse=True)' in Python.
Step-by-step explanation:
To set the sort order to descending in most programming languages or database queries, you would use a sort function or instruction and specify the order as descending. For instance, in SQL, you can achieve this by using the ORDER BY clause along with the DESC keyword, like so: SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name DESC; In programming languages like Python, you can use the sorted() function or .sort() method with the argument reverse=True to sort a list in descending order: sorted(list, reverse=True) or list. sort(reverse=True). It is important to ensure that the data you are sorting is of a comparable type, such as all numbers or all strings, to avoid errors during the sorting process.