I read a book with a disturbing punctuation feature recently. It only used single quotes, no double quotes. I wondered as I was reading how they would handle dialog where one character quoted another. Apparenly, the author or editor couldn't figure it out either because in the 450 page book they never did it.
Disturbing to read. Maybe more disturbing since they had to rearrange sentence structure to accommodate the screwy punctuation.
I agree it makes no sense. I've seen books like that as well. Very annoying. I believe Roald Dahl writes like that. I've noticed that with popular authors that their earlier books are usually better edited than their later books. I don't know if it's just that the publishing industry knows it's going to sell anyway or what.
Some authors don't want anyone messing with their story (for good or ill). Popular authors may gain enough clout to choose their own editors or do without them. Some can pull it off; many more can't.
For example, one of my favorite book series is the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel. The first books in the series are fantastic, but by the fifth book, there's a definite problem -- namely, lack of a good editor. The comma splices in
The Shelters of Stone made me want to go over it with a red pen (and I'm not even an English teacher!) The final book in the series,
The Land of Painted Caves, was so bad that longtime fans threw it aside in disgust. (Luckily, the fanfic writers were happy to come to the rescue with far better material than the author came up with, and if fanfic turns out badly, at least the author has the excuse of being an amateur.)
