It is more concise. Similarly, I was a fan of using attributes instead of text elements (with their unnecessary close tags), but eventually was won over by neat

It is more concise. Similarly, I was a fan of using attributes instead of text elements (with their unnecessary close tags), but eventually was won over by neatness. e.g. translating an eg from https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/SXML.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/SXML.htm... (parrot (@ (type "African Grey")) (name "Alfie")) <parrot> <type>African Grey</type> <name>Alfie</name> </parrot> It's more the one-variable-per-line pretty-printing than the syntax as such, but still.