Ways to wrtie in Active Record

I personally don't find chaining any clearer.  For more complex queries I like blank lines between my select, join, order_by, etc statements for code clarity so chaining is not an option

Code:

$this->db->select('');
$this->db->select('');

$this->db->from('')

$this->db->where('')

$this->db->order_by('')

$this->db->limit('')