do PHONY targets guarantee an order on dependency processing?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  reading o'reilly's make book and i'm confused about something on p.
14 regarding PHONY targets:

$(Program): build_msg ... other targets ...
...
.PHONY: build_msg
build_msg:
        @printf blah blah


below this snippet, it reads:

"Because the printf is in a phony target, the message is printed
immediately before any prerequisites are updated."

really?  i thought there was no way to guarantee the order of
dependency processing.  are phony targets special in this respect?  or
is the book just wrong?

rday