"Do not use semicolons. They are the transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." Kurt Vonnegut
"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." Stephen King
"Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." Thomas Jefferson
"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature." Ernest Hemingway
and making money???
Virginia Woolf said "Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then for your friends, and then you do it for money."
Oh yes, even some things like, to take one author as an example, Ian Rankin's Rebus books slip past Orion editors with shockingly obvious mistakes and those are carried over to republished versions as well. As for the self published works, I grimace. I write social science because it is my trade, I have my degrees and so on, 'O' and 'A' levels in a number of languages but have nothing, nada, nichts, rien, niente, nusquam in English, indeed gave up English at third fail. Because I write 'serious' stuff I have uncompromising editors who notice if I miss a comma. Two weeks ago my OH and I finished one of OUP's online bibliographies. Well, English is her fourth language so she has a great excuse, but some of the things their editors picked up were breathtaking. I do not exaggerate. It is precisely because I am often literally not allowed to play with language to take advantage of nuance and so on that I agree absolutely with you.
I agree Brian. ( I put lower case at beginning of a sentence as well.) I think there are basic rules we should be taught and follow. After that when we understand the rules then we can use punctuation and grammar as we like. Rather like an artist or musician. My horror, is when I look at some self published works, the authors have absolutely no idea about punctuation or grammar. Would the same persons just sit and play a piano without lessons? So many people, because they can write a shopping list believe they can write a novel.
"Cut out all those exclamation marks" sounds like an order to me. I think what Fitz actually meant was, "Cut out all those exclamation marks!" but then he came over all self-conscious. (Btw, was he addressing a French writer? They're always laughing at their own jokes! Or perhaps they're just afraid no one will get them!)
I agree too. Sometimes doing grammar other than the rules and over-punctuating can work. Look on this thread alone and think what purists would say about Glyn writing a two letter 'sentence' beginning with a capitalised 'And' and your 'But' also capitalised starting a sentence! I have no problem with that but people like Vonnegut, King or Fitzgerald neither created nor owned the English (or any other) language and their 'rules' are simply the rules in their heads that, in fact, take the diversity and character out of language. By knowing best of all in their way they didn't know nothing...