Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Well, she wasn't talking about the stuff in the middle of the sentence like commas, colons, etc. Just the stuff at the end. The only "in the middle" stuff she disapproved of was anything that added bang to it, like italics. She saw narration as just flat text. IE, sorta like, "Tom went to town, saw a cat and bought a soda." But she disapproved of things like "Tom got run over!?" or "Not on my watch!"
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Actually, I sort of like the way some writers used to use exclamation and question marks in the middle of sentences. Wilkie Collins, I remember particularly, had some very interesting punctuation in sentences; the sort of thing that would be severely frowned upon now. (Of course, Wilkie Collins was also very keen on exclamation marks ... to fault at times, perhaps.)
But on topic: Much of my third person stuff still tends to be written from the perspective of a particular character, rather than omniscient. As such I would be lost without the person being able swear or exclaim to themselves. Like all emphasis it must be used sparingly (or it is no longer emphasis), but I still like to have it available when I want it.