Does (normal) prerequisite order matter?

[Matt England]

Does (normal) prerequisite order matter?

That is to say, in this example:

<code>
target1: prereq1 prereq2
</code>

...will the rule (if any) for prereq1 complete (and not just start) before 
the rule for prereq2 starts?  This is an important behavior for my 
Makefiles, and thus far it seems to be behaving this way (but I have more 
testing to do); I'm using GNU make 3.80 (on cygwin, mingw, and Redhat systems).

I don't yet see this explained clearly in any of the any of the manual (at 
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_chapter/make_toc.html ), and I 
have read most of the manual, including the parts on rule-writing.

As an aside, I tried understanding order-only prerequisites, but they don't 
seem to address what I seek above:
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_chapter/make_4.html#SEC29
http://kolpackov.net/pipermail/notes/2004-January/000001.html

Thanks for any help,
-Matt