Why SQL formatting matters more than it looks
SQL is written as one long expression, and a query of any complexity becomes unreadable the moment it exceeds a couple of lines. A well-formatted query puts each clause on its own line, indents joins under the tables they attach to, and lines up conditions so the logic is visible at a glance.
That readability is not cosmetic. The most common SQL bugs — a join condition in the WHERE clause instead of ON, a missing parenthesis around an OR, a GROUP BY that omits a selected column — are obvious in formatted output and nearly invisible in a single-line query.
Dialects
Standard SQL is a specification that no database implements exactly. PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server, BigQuery and Snowflake each extend it in ways that a generic parser does not recognise. Selecting your dialect means the formatter understands the syntax rather than treating it as an unparseable token.
When your query returns JSON, the JSON formatter will make the result readable, and JSON to CSV will turn it into a spreadsheet.