That syntax is very unusual from anything I've seen. I am also a fan of splitting pipelines with line breaks for readability, however I put the pipe on the end

That syntax is very unusual from anything I've seen. I am also a fan of splitting pipelines with line breaks for readability, however I put the pipe on the end of each line and omit the backslash. In Bash, a line that ends with a pipe always continues on the next line. In any case, it's probably just a matter of personal taste.