Honestly the question as asked is unambiguous: "write words in alphabetical order" cannot mean anything else than apple, fox, log, pond, pumpkin, river. If what was provided here were the expected answer, the wording should be "write each of the following words with its letters sorted by alphabetical order".

[–] Michal@programming.dev 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Could be understood as "take these words, and write them out in alphabetical order". It's not specifically stated whether letters inside those words should also be sorted or not.

We take it for granted that we have so much experience communicating, we can infer the meaning without full instruction, but children are still acquiring this knowledge and sometimes take things literally with hilarious results.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 23 hours ago

Of course, not blaming children for misunderstanding this; but if this were a software requirement, an adult software developer should be able to understand it correctly.