> and it forever mystifies me that it isn't standard

I can take a stab at justifying that - commas are used to form lists (eg, 1, 2, 3) and text (like "order by count") are supposed to be left justified.

You may be right that there are good reasons to format SQL while ignoring the commas and rules for writing English text. I personally think you are right. But if most people believed that then there'd be enough support to rewrite SQL with a decent modern syntax. Say allowing training commas before a from.

So the existence of SQL is, in a weird way, evidence that your view is uncommon.