Exclamation Comma

Interesting new punctuation addition. Not sure I'd ever feel the need to use one though.

LabRat

It looks like someone is trying to emoticon punctuation.

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.

Could just be a personal challenge. Like Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright, 50 thousand word novel with no letter e in it.

@Shallowford: Some British publishers use single quotes as a matter of course. If a character quotes another, the dialogue would use double quotes.

Like this:

Terry: Actually, that does make sense. I just checked and I'm not sure why a U.S. author and publisher would use it, but it does make sense.

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.)

Annie B., where would I find fanfic for Earth's Children? You are so right about The Land of Painted Caves being horrible. In some ways, it's tainted the whole series for me.

I'm curious, was it a Tom Clancy novel? Just it's like that in just about every one of his books that I've read.


I agree, Land of Painted Caves was a huge disappointment. But I read somewhere just before it was released that it was basically ghostwritten due to Jean M Auel having Alzheimers disease. Weird thought... does that make it basically fanfic? Hehehe.

Our Own Fan Fiction

FanFiction.net: Earth's Children

I haven't written anything for this fandom, though a few plot bunnies have hopped through my mind.

If so, it qualifies as the sadly not-so-rare, elusive badfic.

Thanks, Annie!

Well, that sucks to hear. I'm on Shelters of Stone right now.

The book was Honored Enemy (Legends of the Riftwar, Book 1). The Riftwar series was incredible, the Serpentwar series was good and I couldn't get through whatever the last Feist book I tried to read.

William R. Forstchen co-wrote this book. The book was OK, but not in the same league as earlier Feist books or those co-authored with Janny Wurtz.