Omitting [INTO] in the INSERT ... SELECT statement Does the INTO keyword only makes the query more readable, or does it bring another benefits as well? The queries beneath both seem to run equivalently .

insert ignore
tbl (type, details)
values ('1', '2');


&amp;

insert ignore
into tbl (type, details)
values ('1', '2');


http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!2/96146de
Check out the correct answer to this question - and Bill Karwin's comment on that answer. I was quite surprised to learn that INTO was optional - but indeed it is, although according to the standard it shouldn't be. Amazingly enough, Oracle does require it - must be the only time that Oracle actually enforces one of the ANSI standards where (many*) others leave it optional!

(*) Sybase, MS SQL Server and MySQL amongst others. IBM DB2, Firebird and PostgreSQL seem to enforce the standard.