The shorthand makes inline style more ergonomic, so you can see the wood for the trees, rather than long strings of style attributes in your markup.

Inline style is the thing. That's what tailwind is enabling in a readable way. And inlined style is what makes style more maintainable and less susceptible to override rot.

The separation between form and function is always a bit illusionary, but particularly so with CSS. Almost all markup is written to look a specific way, not a configurable way.