Table/Column Names

Two common ways of formatting table/column names are CamelCase and snake_case:

SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM Employees
WHERE Salary > 500;

SELECT first_name, last_name
FROM employees
WHERE salary > 500;

Names should describe what is stored in their object. This implies that column names usually should be singular. Whether table names should use singular or plural is a heavily discussed question, but in practice, it is more common to use plural table names.

Adding prefixes or suffixes like tbl or col reduces readability, so avoid them. However, they are sometimes used to avoid conflicts with SQL keywords, and often used with triggers and indexes (whose names are usually not mentioned in queries).

Keywords

SQL keywords are not case sensitive. However, it is common practice to write them in upper case.