I am trying to learn the best way to write queries. I also understand the importance of being consistent. Until now, I have randomly used single quotes, double quotes, and backt
Besides all of the (well-explained) answers, there hasn't been the following mentioned and I visit this Q&A quite often.
In a nutshell; MySQL thinks you want to do math on its own table/column and interprets hyphens such as "e-mail" as e
minus mail
.
Disclaimer: So I thought I would add this as an "FYI" type of answer for those who are completely new to working with databases and who may not understand the technical terms described already.