Using "SELECT DISTINCT" in SQL Query for Labels?

Question

Working with ArcGIS 10.2. I'm using GIS data downloaded from SHA and I'm using it to label roads. I have three different features I've selected to label (different kinds of roads). To keep it brief: I'm trying to prevent duplicate labels from popping up. If I use the SQL Query option I can choose which field to label by from the attributes table.

Some roads are labeled more than once, esp in terms of direction (duplicate labels pop up for roads that have an E and W direction etc). Via some quick googling I determined that a "SELECT DISTINCT" command exists for SQL but ArcGIS doesn't seem to recognize it? Would anyone know how to prevent duplicate labels using the options available to me? I accessed this pop up from Properties> Labels> SQL Query... for the GIS data.

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Answer 1

1. You can see this answer: Select distinct values from a single column of an attribute table (or layer)

2. Using Maplex, you can keep labels from repeating within a given distance