bdhu

Bit hard for me to comment really as I don't ride my road bikes anymore, but:

• In the old days I tended to ride either in the drops or with my forearms flat on the tops, holding onto the tops of the levers, when pushing on
  
• When meandering down a lane I'd have my hands very loosely on the bars, more often than not on the tops/like pushing a pram
  
  

Due to being in the drops when I wanted the brakes I (and photographs may confound me here) generally aimed for a vertical brake lever first, smooth line with the tops second.

With compact drops I do aim for a straight line from stem to top, as it were, for literally no other reason than it looks nice, and most of the time it also means that the end of the bar is pointed at the rear brake bridge, as is proper.