Dear workplace readers,

Greetings from Edmonton Canada (-17C and 35 centimeters of snow).

I have three questions for y'all (related to spelling & formatting):

First, what is the "appropriate acronym" for the United States of America -
USA, U.S. or US? The latter reads like "us" (the objective form of we) and
not like "United States", thus it confuses me. My students keep writing US
instead of - what I learned - U.S. Advice? Recommendations? References that
discuss this issue? Unless my eyes betray me, I haven't found any guidance
in my dictionaries or styleguides.

Second, what are the guidelines for using quotation marks, i.e. " and '. I
know that for a quotation-within-quotation, we should use the single
quotation mark, i.e. ' - should the quotation mark preceed commas,
semi-colon, quotation marks, end points (dots) etc.?

Third, why do some authors <still> use double-spaces (i.e. touch the
spacebar on the keyboard twice before starting a new sentence). I understand
that the double-spacing rule originated from the day(s) of ordinary
typewriters, but I have noted on several occasions that double spacing is
continued to be used. Are there any hard-and-fast-rules for when to switch
between single spacing and double spacing?

Thanks in advance!

Tomas Nilsson
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