Yep, this stood out to me too. Drives me absolutely nuts when an element you expect to be inline is now suddenly block. Especially because the author's reasoni

Yep, this stood out to me too. Drives me absolutely nuts when an element you expect to be inline is now suddenly block. Especially because the author's reasoning is "it can cause confusion when trying to position them or add vertical margins", after just explaining that with inline-block "you can apply vertical margins to these".