Right, I can see that...is it really bad practice though to do it for a quick line like in my example, as long as it doesn't get too nested like Salathe mentioned...??

I just feel, if I need to check something, and echo it, I'd rather save the trouble of using brackets, but if I have to use multiple else/if statements, then I would use brackets...

Here's an example if I want to do a quick exit...

$a = 10;

if($a == 10) exit;