Pot->Cap->ground or Cap->Pot->ground are effectively the same, the difference being with the latter you save a length of wire as the cap itself is the link between the volume and tone pots. How much would that add up to in a year's production?

The config of the tone pot itself, as in what you connect where, is a mixture of personal preference, habit, and what you've been taught. Some use the middle lug as the path to ground (via the cap if it's pot then cap), others prefer to ground the outside lug. I tend to connect the signal to the tone's middle (wiper) lug as if the wiper fails it should go open circuit, thus disconnecting it.

The 'modern' vs '50's/vintage' tone wiring is essentially which lug it connects to on the volume pot and how that affects the sound. 50's wiring has the tone connected to the 'out' lug of the volume pot (usually the middle lug on an LP). This helps to retain the highs as the volume is turned down and, to some ears, produces a more defined, complex and clear sound. The price for this is that the volume and tone are more interlinked... adjusting the volume affects the tone and adjusting the tone affects the volume, to a degree. So you can end up doing a lot of knob fiddling erm.

Modern wiring connects the tone on the 'in' lug of the volume pot, which eliminates the vol/tone interaction of the 50's style and can simplify things a bit. However, this also comes at a cost, as when you turn down the volume some of your highs can bleed through the pot's reduced resistance to ground, giving you a muffled/muddier sound. This is why treble-bleed style mods are sometimes added to the volume pot to allow some of those potentially lost highs to bypass the volume and go straight to output.

But, as always, two people can listen to the same thing and hear something completely different... or no difference at all. Try both ways, see what you like or what works for you on a particular build and go with it.