I often see people who write SQL like this:
SELECT * from TableA LEFT OUTER JOIN TableB ON (ID1=I2)
I myself write simply:
SELE
I think there is no such thing as portable SQL in the year 2009 anyway... At some point, you need to write DBMS-specific statements (like retrieving top N rows).
I personally find the JOIN syntax redundant and instead I comma-separate table names.