<p>I'm curious to know how people are using table aliases.  The other developers where I work always use table aliases, and always use the alias of a, b, c, etc.</p>

<p>Here's an example:</p>

<pre><code>SELECT a.TripNum, b.SegmentNum, b.StopNum, b.ArrivalTime
FROM Trip a, Segment b
WHERE a.TripNum = b.TripNum
</code></pre>

<p>I disagree with them, and think table aliases should be use more sparingly.  </p>

<p>I think they should be used when including the same table twice in a query, or when the table name is very long and using a shorter name in the query will make the query easier to read.  </p>

<p>I also think the alias should be a descriptive name rather than just a letter.  In the above example, if I felt I needed to use 1 letter table alias I would use t for the Trip table and s for the segment table.</p>

I feel that you should use them as often as possible but I do agree that t & s represent the entities better than a & b.
This boils down to, like everything else, preferences.  I like that you can depend on your stored procedures following the same conventions when each developer uses the alias in the same manner.
Go convince your coworkers to get on the same page as you or this is all worthless.  The alternative is you could have a table Zebra as first table and alias it as a.  That would just be cute.