"Yes, but that means it has to have a line-continuation character instead! "

But that is rarely needed, so an extra effort for something rarely needed is fine. My point is that lot of specs imposed due to the era when K&R wrote the C design can now be removed.
For example, for simple syntax typo errors you really don't need Lint. But K&R did not write anything specific about how far syntax checking should go, so even today the syntax checking does not catch typos well.

And C is like a unicycle, you can do a lot of fancy things with it, but get careless and you could as well loose some teeth. It abused like any other language, more because of it is flexible. But then again, people still manage to have fatal accidents in a Merc or a BMW. So what I have said earlier is in reference to good programmers, how to speed them up. A good programmer is more likely to make and miss a typo than a logical error.