In MySQL, the ORDER BY clause is used in a SELECT statement to sort the result set based on one or more columns. 

The basic syntax is:

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column1 [ASC | DESC], column2 [ASC | DESC], ...;

• column1, column2, ...: The columns you want to retrieve.
• ORDER BY: Specifies the sorting order.
• ASC: Ascending order (default if not specified).
• DESC: Descending order. 
   

Here's a simple example:

-- Retrieve employee names and salaries from the "employees" table, sorted by salary in descending order
SELECT employee_name, salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC;