This code doesn't work.

This code does.

The working code was generated by phpmyadmin. I've seen those diagonal single quote marks, nor have I read anything about them in php books/tutorials/etc. What are they, and how do I even make them? I feel stupid asking this but I just spent an hour trying to figure out why my sql query wasn't working and that appears to be the only difference.

Single quotes denote a string. Table and column names are not strings, thus you can't use single quotes. However, some databases allow you to use backticks (`) around table and column names. Personally, I never use backticks around table/column names.

Oh, so I could have just been using:

That makes sense, thanks Michael.