Using order by with union

I have switched from using one table to two for my queries, but I have run into a problem using order by

I would like to use this query across two tables select word,num from wordtable order by -num;

like this

select word,num from wordtable union select word,num from wordtable2 order by -num;

but it says that "ORDER BY item must be the number of a SELECT-list expression"

the same query using num instead of -num works fine, but I just need it to come out in the
reverse order

also,
select word,-num from wordtable union select word,num from wordtable2 order by num;
does not work either

anyone who knows how to solve this is cool Received on Thu Oct 14 1999 - 11:53:35 CDT