A long list might best be put in three columns so that in can be viewed easily on one screen in graphical browsers, but this would be inappropriate for Lynx or a screen reader. The use of styles for this type of formatting allows those user agents where columns are inappropriate to ignore the suggestion. I like to be able to see all of the links on one page, so I use a table to make it two- column text. However, for accessibility reasons, I would rather have this part of a style, so that others can be guaranteed to be able to access it. Since few other people use it, I consider it OK to use tables, since even a browser that doesn't understand table tags would process the page correctly.
Any comments are welcome.