Signal and noise in programming language

It has been my observation that the syntax of a programming language affects how it is used all out of proportion to its importance in the overall scheme of things. Specifically, programmers tend to avoid long-winded constructs even after they have been assured that such forms make for nicer code. And they seem to delight in the terse, no matter what the cost in intelligibility or running time. Witness APL. That language at least has the virtue of being consistent; and one can argue at the other extreme that COBOL is uniformly wordy. Most languages are rather inconsistent, and few achieve that delicate balance between the concise and the cryptic that makes for a truly useful notation. It is important, then, to evaluate what parts of a language syntax provide useful signal to the reader, and what are simply noise.