<p>What are the pros and cons of using table aliases in SQL?  I personally try to avoid them, as I think they make the code less readable (especially when reading through large where/and statements), but I'd be interested in hearing any counter-points to this.  When is it generally a good idea to use table aliases, and do you have any preferred formats?</p>

Well, there are some cases you
must
use them, like when you need to join to the same table twice in one query.
It also depends on wether you have unique column names across tables. In our legacy database we have 3-letter prefixes for all columns, stemming from an abbreviated form from the table, simply because one ancient database system we were once compatible with didn't support table aliases all that well.
If you have column names that occur in more than one table, specifying the table name as part of the column reference is a must, and thus a table alias will allow for a shorter syntax.