It's not pretty, but I think there are other things that are more serious problems.

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/09/22/erlang

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/10/09/languages-wor...

If it really bothers you, there is LFE (Lisp-Flavored Erlang). Like Python's whitespace, Perl's line-noise, etc. this is one of the first things people find strange along with single-assignment and then fades pretty fast.