How do TOP and OFFSET FETCH differ?

Short answer: TOP (n) returns first n rows (optionally WITH TIES). OFFSET/FETCH is ANSI-style paging and requires ORDER BY. For keyset paging at scale, prefer seek-based pagination over deep OFFSET.

Sample solution

-- Page 3 of 10
SELECT EmpId, Name
FROM Employees
ORDER BY EmpId
OFFSET 20 ROWS FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;

SELECT TOP (10) WITH TIES Name, Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY Salary DESC;

Deep OFFSET on large tables is expensive — mention keyset paging as a follow-up.