Yes, the banes of markdown reap their ugly head again.
The point is, though, that while in a developers mental model you attach ref or ptr to the type, the language itself does not, and writing it out like it does can easily drive newer developers who do not understand the nuance to make hard to recognize mistakes as a result of it.
I prefer to use char* p; as well as std::string& s; and etc. rather than attaching the type syntax to the name, since in essence that's part of the type. But yes, it's a mess that this inherited C logic doesn't treat it that way clearly. To avoid such mistakes, it's better not to use comma declarations altogether, you can perfectly avoid them.
It's a good feeling when working with new languages like Rust which avoid such mess.