Exception: Patek, which (a) uses few enough basic movements that you can tell from the hand layout and (b) has a tradition of not putting the wording on the dial. I also think it usually looks good and balances the dial. For most watches, it's consistent with tradition, and leaving it off looks like
Watches are made extremely precisely these days, but that typically means small problems disable them. I find my older watches to be very reliable. They are not engineered to such tight tolerances, and if something gets a few microns out of place they just keep going. (Also, they were made at a time