Question: my problem is that the Left Outer Join shown below works totally fine as long as I do not include the columns `bp.frac_4/8` and `bp2.frac_4/8_2`.
I tried several varieties, including `'bp.frac_4/8'`, `bp.frac_"4/8"`, `bp.frac_'+'4/8`, etc.  

Either I got the error 

```
#1054 - Unknown column 'frac_4' in 'field list'

```

or it just gave me the column with `frac_4/8` written out in each row.
How can I solve this problem?

```
SELECT bp.person_id, DATE(bp.recentDate), bp.amount, bp2.amount2, bp.frac_4/8,
bp2.frac_4/8_2
FROM bestper bp
LEFT JOIN bestper2 bp2
ON bp.person_id=bp2.person_id AND DATE(bp.recentDate)=DATE(bp2.recentDate)
ORDER BY  DATE(bp.recentDate) DESC

```

Answer: 
use backtick to escape in `mySQL`

example

```
SELECT bp.`frac_4/8`,...
FROM...

```
Use double quotes with ANSI SQL mode enabled or back ticks.