The Relational System - Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management - page 186

Column-Commenting
Before MySQL 4.1, the MySQL structure itself does not support adding comments to a
column. Thanks to phpMyAdmin's metadata, we can nevertheless comment columns.
Since MySQL 4.1, native column commenting is supported. The good news is that
for any MySQL version, column commenting via phpMyAdmin is always accessed
via the Structure page by editing each field's structure. In the following example, we
need to comment three columns, so we choose them and click the pencil icon:

To obtain the next panel as seen here, we are working in vertical mode by setting $cf
g['DefaultPropDisplay'] to 'vertical' . We enter the following comments:

•
•
•

isbn: book number
page_count: approximate
author_id: cf author table

Then we click Save .