>>96286293
>>96286337
I remember one of the earlier talks about MTG design, by Richard Garfield.
He discussed good ability formatting. One of the things he stressed the most, is that nothing should ever be included in an ability just for the sake of flavor. Each card should be as elegant as possible. Its flavor should be clear in what the card does, and you should never add random flavor chaff to a card, because it makes the card harder to parse.

Just off memory, I remember he said something akin to "Doing this is one of the clearest trademarks of a bad designer."