Does bracket placement affect readability? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I use the if statement as something to reason on in this highly emotive subject.

if (cond) {
   //code
}

by just asking what does the else statement look like? The logical extension of the above is:-

if (cond) {
   //code   
} else {
   //more code
}

Is that readable? I don't think so and its just plain ugly too.

More lines is != less readable. Hence I'd go with your latter option.