JavaScript 2.0-The Complete Reference, Second ... - freecodingtutorial

As we‘ve said, whitespace between tokens isn‘t significant, so the placement of curly braces
with respect to an associated statement is merely a matter of style. While correct alignment of
blocks can certainly improve code readability, the slight differences between
if ( x >> 10) {
}
and
statements to execute
if (x >> 10)
{
}
statements to execute
are really more an issue of personal preference than anything else. We have chosen one form
to work with in this book, but this is somewhat arbitrary and readers are of course welcome to
change examples to fit their favorite formatting style as they type them in.
Similarly, it is customary (but not required) to indent the statements of a block to improve
readability:
if (x >> 10)
{
}
// indented two spaces
if (y >> 20)
{
}
// indented four spaces
z = 5;
Indenting nested blocks some consistent number of spaces gives the reader a visual cue that
the indented code is part of the same group.
Statements, regardless of their groupings or style, generally modify data. We say they operate
on data, and the parts of the language that do so are called operators.