Thinking this is an exclusively American convention is yet another effect of microplastics…

We’re dooooooomed 😭

I dunno, seems reasonable to me in the same way that Spanish using "¿" at the beginning of a question makes sense.

That it's inconsistent with other units is certainly annoying, but if anything I think it's the more sensible way.

It's a convention for writing checks. If the dollar amount on a check read "300.00$" there's nothing stopping me from writing "1300.00$" on there. But if you put "$300.00" that number is enclosed on both sides and there is no chance of being able to modify it (without significantly more effort that can be much more easily noticed)