Well, the idea is that areas are bordered by the streets, so in the end it's simpler to attach the nodes to the surrounding ways from the start so as not to leave any unneeded and rather (IMHO) unaesthetic "whitespace" (the "middle" thing is a strawman: streets, unlike ways, are drawn as having actual width). I agree it's not all that intuitive (and I'm used to cleaning stuff anyway. I used to do that all the time on Wikipedia :p), but I also agree it makes for better-looking maps.

By that logic, we would have streets that have no width. I'm fine with the philosophical reasoning for it. I'm just annoyed that I've run afoul of this issue with my keyboard.

Yes, that is what I was thinking, and as I say above, I figured (far as I can tell) how to handle it in Potlatch, which is more use-friendly for me given I don't have access to a GPS apparatus (Montreal is, fortunately, well-pictured).

I think I've gotten 'round it in the end. You have to hover over the way you want to attach to until its node become blue. I'll see later how best to do intersections.