Perhaps in the pure sense of "reading", but whitespace has long been known to improve readability and makes any document more inviting. The same is true for code. I think of the days when I printed out code and went over it. Not as common these days, but it's still easier to run down a column and confirm what the target field and source "fields" are (may not be a field, of course). For instance, if you are pulling some fields from another table, and the table names line up, a spelling error will stand out as will the usage of another similarly named table or cursor (and you don't always have control over the names). But when they don't line up, these issues hide more easily. I am not religious about this issue of lining up the replace statements, but tend to do it more often than not and always on statements over a few lines.

>An area where we'll have to agree to disagree. I find it much more difficult to read.
>
>>But much easier to read and therefore spot errors. And the code is more inviting.