Riddle answer format

Question

Recently, I have noticed a new formatting (preformatted clues) with riddles.

My question:
Is this formatting really necessary?

For more info, click the spoilers in New formatting.

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Old formatting

This was how answers were formatted when I joined the site.

Another clue

Another: used to refer to an additional person or thing of the same type as one already mentioned or known about; one more; a further.

Et cetera

Latin word meaning and so on. Often abbreviated as 'etc.'.

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New formatting

Note how the clue has been preformatted.

Do we need this?

People are editing this style in, and all it does is make the whole visible text grey with same character width.

How does this improve the post?

IMO, not at all.

Answer 1

If people are using this formatting, meh.

As Sp3000 said in a comment, it's a matter of personal taste. Historically some (ex-)moderators on this site have had a thing about removing code formatting everywhere except where it's actually being used for code, but my response to this has always been more like a shrug. I don't like the look of the formatting in your second example (in particular, the grey block around the clues is easy to confuse with the grey spoilerblock, although that might be just due to the colour scheme here on meta), but I'm not sure if I'd bother editing someone's answer to remove such formatting.

If people are editing it into other people's posts, roll back.

Again, it's a matter of personal taste, and that means other people's personal taste should be respected. If a low-rep user suggested an edit to change the formatting of clues in this way, it would be rejected as "no improvement whatsoever"; for exactly the same reason, if a 2k+ rep user makes such an edit, it should be rolled back and the user educated. I've heard the general principle stated as "the OP's decision goes, unless it's stupid". Whether using code formatting for clues is stupid could probably be argued either way, but not using it definitely isn't stupid.