I wasn't making a case that words are better than symbols, only that there's always a trade off between representing something using existing known syntax and a somewhat less known but more concise and exact syntax, and that tradeoff is largely defined by how familiar your target audience is with that syntax.
C-like syntaxes are more popular than lisp syntax(for example) not because it's inherently better but because most people have some exposure to it at this point through other languages they have been exposed to. Interestingly, that actually does make it inherently better in some aspects when choosing a syntax to adopt, such as learnability. For the person that only knows C and the person that only knows Lisp, which might have an easier time with the average rust program? What about someone that only knows Prolog?
The issue is not about only using words, the issue is about using things your audience already knows. People use numbers in letters not just because words are less convenient, but because words are less convenient and they know the people on the other end know Arabic numerals so that's a valid medium to rely on.
For programming languages it's less that words are better and more that there are either different or conflicting meanings for many symbols leading to confusion for those that deal with multiple languages or are new to the current language, so time needs to be taken to internalize what they mean in this new context. That doesn't make them bad or worse than words, but often they necessarily are less obvious in meaning to those new to the language to benefit those that are more familiar or experts.