Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You have to understand the rules before you can know when it's appropriate to break them. I have no issue with a writer who has a thorough understanding of how to write grammatically-correct English deciding that it's appropriate in particular circumstances to break with standard grammatical conventions. Unfortunately, though, most authors who do it are just ignorant.
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+100, on top of Cinsajoy's million. Can't say it strenuously enough. It's already a struggle to try to read authors that don't understand some of the very fundamental rules of writing without trying to slog through run-on sentences that "sound cool" to someone who doesn't understand what's wrong about them.
As an example (not run-on sentences, but something similar), there's a cadre of writers at the KDP who simply don't understand the difference between ellipses and em-dashes, and persist in misusing both. A BUNCH of them. They argue, against all evidence, that ellipses are to be used for a break in speech, an abrupt break in speech, and that the em-dash is to be used to trail off, (or for something else I can't recall).
It's not only mind-boggling, it's frustrating. When other writers tell them that they are incorrect, and point them to myriad sources showing them the correct use of both, they're ignored. I absolutely don't understand WHY on earth the misusing authors would persist in so doing; I can only assume that to fix their work is either too much labor, or too tedious, or they think that fixing it now would admit that they were wrong earlier--but I make a point of knowing who these writers are, and steer clear of their works (most of which, fortunately, are in genres or have plotlines that wouldn't appeal to me, anyway, but still....).
To me, this is the same thing. Misusing punctuation out of ignorance, willful or otherwise, is the same thing as constructing run-on sentences without understanding what rules one is breaking. When done masterfully, a run-on sentence can convey something important; but when done either in ignorance, or without a high skill level...well, suffice it to say it's like reading all those books out there where the author didn't indent the narrative paragraphs, but indented the dialogue paragraphs; or where they didn't use dialogue tags, thinking that they're unneeded; or don't use beats to move things along. There's art, and then there are simply manuscripts that not only should never have been released, but should never have escaped.
Hitch