Classic old Lisp doesn't have the problem of long words: it has mostly short words like atom, cons, car, cdr, array, ...

Then, eventually, along comes Common Lisp with symbols like multiple-value-bind and update-instance-for-redefined-class.

I made a dialect called TXR Lisp in which most of the important symbols in the standard library are deliberately quite short, to avoid this readability/writability issue.

Lisp code often avoids vertical breaks within sections in a function, because many constructs nest, and so the nesting and indentation separates them already, like:

   (while ...
     ...
     (let ...
       ...))
   (while ...

It's like point form:

   - abcde
     - efgh
     - jlk
       - mn
   - next point