I tend to remove carriage returns from my CSS too. Partly for saving file size and also as I find it easier to scan for the chunk of CSS I want to edit.
This CSS shorthand property will only work if you're specifying both the font-size and the font-family - omit either and the CSS rule will be completely ignored. Also, if you don't specify the font-weight, font-style, or font-varient then these values will automatically default to a value of normal, so do bear this in mind too.
I have found advantages to both approaches, but have settled on having each rule on its own line, because it's so fast in any decent programmer's editor to move the lines around, or sort them alphabetically. Plus, it's faster to spot the rule that you are looking for.