Unable to add new table to database … sort of

I’m writing a plugin which I hope to release in the future. The plugin will add a table to the database when activated. I followed the instructions here, but nothing happedned. I didn’t get an error, but it didn’t create the table either. I copied and pasted the code straight from that page and that didn’t work.

On PHPMyAdmin, I added the table manually and the SQL it showed as having been executed had put the table name and field names inside backticks. I modified the plugin, dropped the table, and re-activated it, and it worked. Does anybody know why this is? Why is there a discrepancy between WP’s docs and what works?