So, IOW, it's not purely a point of style, it's more about what's a sane way to write things given the requirements of the language's syntax when you're dealing with pointer declarations?
Which would explain why it seems so odd to me; I spent a fair amount of time in C-style languages, but typically only ones that lack pointers.
Though, if the goal is communication, wouldn't it be clearer still to use typedefs to clean up more complex declarations a bit? Or does that end up making things worse?
People do that if such a type is used a lot but probably not if it's just a one-off, just like when they write a function instead of using the same snippet a lot but don't if it isn't.
Which would explain why it seems so odd to me; I spent a fair amount of time in C-style languages, but typically only ones that lack pointers.