In the syntax definition you can see the OFFSET clause is required, but the FETCH clause is not. If the FETCH clause is omitted, all rows following OFFSET will be returned. You’ll also find that the keywords ROW and ROWS are interchangeable, as are FIRST and NEXT, which enables a more natural syntax.

To ensure the accuracy of the results, especially as you move from page to page of data, it’s important to construct an ORDER BY clause that will provide unique ordering and yield a deterministic result. Because of the way SQL Server’s query optimizer works, it’s technically possible for a row to appear on more than one page, unless the range of rows is deterministic.