An interesting read! I do follow certain rules when writing SQL, and I agree that having them and following them is a good idea. Plenty of what is in the article looks like good advice.

However, these rules do not always appear to be consistent with how the code in (most) other programming languages is written. Consider indentation, for example. The usual approach is to line up those elements of the code which correspond to the same logical level of the flow, whether it is C++, Javascript, or Lisp. So rather than (quoting from the article)

  SELECT file_hash
    FROM file_system
   WHERE file_name = '.vimrc'

I would rather see either

  SELECT file_hash
  FROM file_system
  WHERE file_name = '.vimrc'

or

  SELECT file_hash
      FROM file_system
      WHERE file_name = '.vimrc'

(The difference here is the same as between indented and non-indented braces in C.) I think this is especially useful when we have multiple joins or inner queries.

Many suggested rules are indeed consistent with what I have seen to be accepted as best practices. Such as naming a table in singular (more precisely, giving it the name of what a single row corresponds to), or avoiding the infamous Hungarian notation (pretty much an accepted best practice in most languages that I have seen).

Overall, I think, a good first step towards building best practices.