Stationery pad: change in behavior?

Question

It appears that the function of the “Stationery pad” option has changed from its long-standing and well-established behavior. In all previous versions of the Mac OS, you could designate a file as a "Stationery pad" with a check box in the file's Get Info window. This would let you open the file without overwriting the original Then when you did a “Save” or “Save As . . .” you gave the edited file a name and saved it. The original file remained unchanged and in the past there was no other duplication of the original file.
Now when you open a Stationery pad file, the OS immediately creates a copy of the original in the original directory. If you edit and save the newly opened file, you can still save it wherever you want and the original stationery file is left untouched. HOWEVER, the OS has already created a second copy of your original with the word “copy” appended to the file name, and saved it in the same director as the original. As a result you now have two new copies of your original Stationery file.
So, now my hard drive is littered with files that I had never intended to create because of this new behavior. Yes, it’s easy to find these files by searching for “copy” and deleting them, but this is very inconvenient and is a major change from the long established behavior of the Finder’s "Stationery pad" option.
Am I missing something here, is there some Finder preference that I haven’t discovered?
Has anyone else noticed this?
MuSonics
PS: I just noticed this with the update to Snow Leopard. The change might have occurred with Leopard.

Answer 1

Thanks again Jeffrey,
But, now I'm really nonplussed. I've been using Stationery pads for years, at least 20. I started on Macs in 1983 as a member of an Apple Consortium University, where we were writing programs for the soon-to-be-released Macs using Lisa Pascal. Now I'm a consultant, and I use about 10 different Stationary pad documents, and probably use them 10 - 20 times a day. Every time I make a phone call to a client I open a stationery Phone Log, fill it out, save it, and I'm done. Yeah, consultants talk on the phone a lot! So, this isn't exactly something new for me or a rare occurrence.
But, the way I described the Stationery pad behavior in my original post is the way it has always worked, and this accounts for at least 30 - 40 files that I create every week. It wasn't until I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Leopard, that I started finding these "copy" files. But, the Apple How To file you referenced is perfectly clear. I just don't understand why for me it has never worked this way before Snow Leopard. There are also several other people having a similar experience and reaction as I'm having, but as I said, the Apple How To would seem to indicate I'm . . . um . . . confused.
In any event, I'll just maintain my new standard practice of deleting all the "copy" files every week. Just one more new habit to learn. Most of them are in one directory, so this isn't exactly a chore.
Thanks,
MuSonics