SQL Server (2017?) breaks if you update it on a UTF-8 Windows because it runs a TSQL that doesn't work with that code page. That script is a mess. Some of it is indented using tabs, some space. Trailing whitespace. Yuck
Much of modern linting and commit hooking is dedicated to checking whitespace placement, variable naming and function lengths but the well-formatted newly rewritten code is still buggy as hell - it just looks pretty
There have been numerous bugs caused by incorrect code formatting, most notably an SSL security bug from 2014: https://dwheeler.com/essays/apple-goto-fail.html
Another reason for formatting is the “minimal diff” paradigm. If a formatting rule would not be followed, in the next commit hitting this code, the format would also be affected, causing a larger diff than necessary.
There are other reasons for simple format linting, but the reasons above are the most profound.
Lastly, formatting is part of a range of static code analysis tools. Generally, formatting inconsistencies are the easiest to detect and resolve, as opposed to more sophisticated tools.
It is kind of like "pattern matching" on the error patterns.
The inverse may not have the same correlation, since it can be automated.