To be clear, I agree with your HEREDOC style, but I've seen many instances of the lone, trailing HEREDOC.

Also, in response to:

I won't comment on the so-called "perlish" style in general, except to make a loud gagging sound and mutter "over my dead body".

I wish to reiterate that I would never allow these into code I release to anyone -- it's only to mark statements I want to remove later in a way that's (a)easy to manage programmatically {as compared to, say, indentation changes}, yet (b)provides visual distinction.