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You can also start all of your commands with "BEGIN;" (at least in Postgres) to ensure you're in a transaction you can easily rollback.

Another trick it to start all "DELETE" commands as a "SELECT" to ensure you get the "WHERE" part correct, and then swap out the "SELECT *" with a "DELETE".

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I use the latter almost religiously. Also can be useful to add a LIMIT on the end, just to guard against an UPDATE running amok. And I tend to write my queries 'backwards' (e.g. starting with the WHERE clause, ending with the "DELETE", to guard against executing the query prematurely.

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