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I'm making a website that has search results, and I hide some of them

I want to show the user that some are hidden

Which one should I say?

  • Showing first 25 results only

or

  • Showing 25 first results only

edit: I've seen questions like this What is the rule for adjective order?

But I was wondering what to do when you have 2 adjectives of the same kind. Or Perhaps "first" and "25" are not of the same type?

Community
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Pacane
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  • Have you tried searching for say "first 100 results" and "100 first results"? – Edwin Ashworth May 23 '14 at 18:57
  • Yeah and I results with both. I just wanted to see which one was the correct use. – Pacane May 23 '14 at 19:00
  • @Pacane Just think it through logically. To begin with you need the definite article. 'The first 25 results' means results numbers 1 to 25. But 'the 25 first results', is a bit ambiguous and could imply that there were 25 things that were equal first. – WS2 May 23 '14 at 20:28
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    @Pacane: I checked Google Books, but there weren't really enough *results* results to be conclusive. On the other hand, searching for "the first 100 applicants" yields 1250 results, as compared to *none at all* for "the 100 first applicants". That should be a pretty big clue as to what people use (though why might be harder to answer). – FumbleFingers May 23 '14 at 20:57

2 Answers2

4

Showing first 25 results only

Is correct. You aren't showing the first result 25 times, you are showing the first 25 results one time.

njboot
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0

Just think it through logically. To begin with you need the definite article. 'The first 25 results' means results numbers 1 to 25. But 'the 25 first results', is a bit ambiguous and could imply that there were 25 things that were equal first.

WS2
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