What is the point of the long gaps between the curly braces?

It's simply more organized and makes it a lot easier to write additional code. If you end up needing to add additional code you can simply click in front of the first { and hit enter and start typing. If you write all your code like this footer { color: green;} you end up needing to click in front of the { and then hit enter to move the code down, then take your hand of the key board and click in front of the { again. The way you keep seeing it simply allows you to type faster, if you need to come back and add additional code.

Do you see how when you have several attributes like the img below and many html targets it makes sense to write it out in blocks rather than long single lines that may go off of your editor and cause you to have to scroll over.

p {
    font-family: cursive;
}

#carlyTitle {
    color: aquamarine;
}

img {
    max-height: 300px;
    max-width: 200px;
    border: dashed;
    border-color: orange;
    border-radius: 20px 25%;
}

.big {
    font-style: oblique;
    color: firebrick;
    outline-style: none;

}

An interesting side note: Once you start javascript, you have to place your brackets like this:

function correctBrac() {
    //stuff to do;
}

and NOT like this as in C programming.

function wrongBrac() 
{
    //stuff to do;
}