Neville ChaimBerlin,
“Yes and no. If you had a family custom to use a certain Siddur and say exactly every word of its print, that would certainly be more desirable than one that includes verses you just have to know to skip.”
As I said before, even if you have a siddur that fits your customs like a glove, you’ll still have to skip things like shir hamaalos before shema when it’s not the aseres yemei tshuva, hakeil hakadosh vs hamelech hakadosh, yaalei v’yavo, al hanissim, long tachanun when it’s not Monday or Thursday, etc. One cannot escape skipping/flipping completely, so one has to work out coping mechanisms to maintain kavanna. Usually that’s accomplished through using the same siddur daily and becoming extremely familiar with it. So while having a siddur that matches your personal nusach exactly is better than one that does not to some degree, it seems like a small potato to me in the bigger picture, and I was curious as to why it tops Gadolhadorah’s list. That she used the phrase “hashkafa” rather than nusach or custom to describe the differences was also curious.
“It would make it easier to teach your kids your family Nusach also, rather than having to say “we don’t say this, we do say this, etc.””
I can counter-argue that it’s beneficial for a child to know that there are different customs, and to be told which one is his or hers. That way when s/he encounters variations, s/he is not confused. If a child can be expected to learn to skip over yaalei v’yavo when it’s not Rosh Chodesh or Chol Hamoed, certainly s/he can learn to skip or say the parentheticals in “b’rich shmei” before leining or aleinu at the end of davening.