I write such things like so:

my $sql= join( ' ',
    "SELE­CT *",
    "FROM sometable",
    "WHERE something",
)­;
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It is a practice that has scaled very well for me for the several years I've been using it. Before that I tried quite a few different styles including here-docs (<<END), sprintf, and several flavors of qq<...\n...>. They all eventually sucked in too many cases.