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I thought that's an American thing.

Two spaces is so long ago, that as an europaen I even didn't know, you can do this. Big cultural gap!

Yup. It must be an american thing. I've never seen it in any typewritten document in Italy.

What -- quotes straddling punctuation?

I don't know if it's "an American thing" but, as a resident of the USA, I find it "a stupid thing". Note my period outside the quotes.

Periods go inside quotes, in my world at least, when the quoted text originally included either a comma or period at the point where the quotation ends. Otherwise, the period goes outside the quotes, because putting it inside the quotes makes it an inaccurate quote.

Damned journalistic typesetters are idiots.

> What -- quotes straddling punctuation?

Yup. I haven't seen it in Europe, and I also find it stupid.

Actually, it’s like the two-space after periods, replacing a longer space: it's a workaround when typesetting does not collapse punctuations. The dot should be below the outer edge of the quotes, otherwise you have too much diagonal white space — not unlike upper-case A and V should be set closer.

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