Going to throw my 2 pence in as a non-electrician.
Since I spend my time building up experimental hardware, designing printed circuit boards, laying out test inverters, etc. all that I can say is 'neatness counts'. The best way that I can put it is that when hardware is neat, flaws are simply more visible and easier to fix.
I believe that this applies to the way wires are laid out behind the wallboard. Sure, your customer may never see them once the insulation is in and the wallboard up, but neatness will make a performance difference in terms of the errors that you catch and the debugging time spent fixing flaws.
That said, what I am talking about is _practical_ neatness. _Twists_ in the romex don't matter, but support does. Putting your holes at 20.000" from stud bottom doesn't matter; putting them 'to eye' level probably does. Simply laying a rats nest of conductors across the ceiling is not sufficient, but perhaps just a few bridle rings would suffice to separate related runs. 'Neat and workmanlike' is _not_ 'perfect and CDO' ('CDO' is like 'OCD', except that the letters are in proper alphabetical order...
) Neat and workmanlike is showing care and forethought in the installation so as to maximize installation efficiency.
'Neatness' can go too far. Work all of the twists out of the romex, and then run it with an iron? Sure looks pretty, but now if the building settles, there is no slack at all on that conductor. Bends _should_ have some radius, support should allow some give. IMHO that trick of using a wrap of sheath to support the romex is a great idea. Perhaps it needs to be evaluated by UL for strength, but presuming that it is strong enough for the job, I bet it works well from the point of view of being a nice compliant support, letting things move and slip just enough to relieve excessive stresses. IMHO the original picture showing a bunch of NM running side by side an inch or so apart is _too_ neat for inside a wall...though on a running board in an unfinished basement? A pleasure.
-Jon
