Incorrect syntax near ''

Such unexpected problems can appear when you copy the code from a web page or email and the text contains unprintable characters like individual CR or LF and non-breaking spaces.

Panagiotis Kanavos is right, sometimes copy and paste T-SQL can make appear unwanted characters...

I finally found a simple and fast way (only Notepad++ needed) to detect which character is wrong, without having to manually rewrite the whole statement: there is no need to save any file to disk.

It's pretty quick, in Notepad++:

• Click "New file"
• Check under the menu "Encoding": the value should be "Encode in UTF-8"; set it if it's not
• Paste your text
• From Encoding menu, now click "Encode in ANSI" and check again your text

You should easily find the wrong character(s)