You know, my first job during college involved updating construction documents based on changes that were approved by both the contractors and the owners. Penmanship was critical when updating blueprints by hand - which was always a lot cheaper than getting the source documents, revising them, and reprinting them.

In my very limited experience, I learned the importance of penmanship in that profession.

In my much larger experience since, I've learned the irrelevance of penmanship to writing code. I don't practice my blueprint handwriting anymore. It would be wholly unfit-for-purpose without a bunch of practice. But I understand its value in that context.

If I understand the thrust of your comment correctly, you're pointing towards removing formatting as a channel being a net positive, despite the loss of all these indicators. I might almost agree with that, except for my point 4. Sometimes it's better, on the whole, to break conventions. Mechanical formatting systems cannot make these judgement calls.

I think the minor friction of explicit formatting is a net positive. I think the communication channel it adds carries more value than the friction it imposes hurts. (And I'm calling it explicit formatting because it doesn't have to be manual - it just has to be done with intention, judgement, and approval.)

I don't think the massive friction imposed by submitting code as ink on paper provides enough value to be worth its costs, by contrast.