Musings on punctuation

I've had an email conversation with one of my two editors about what a writer should accept or not from a pro editor – which was a topic she started on her blog. I commented I take 50% of it because I don't want to lose my "voice" and then she wrote me in private to ask me more, which ended up in a discussion about style, more than voice. Which taught me that "style" is closer to "formatting guidelines" than "voice", but you never stop learning, right?

OK, keep in mind that my original punctuation isn't even in English as I've written in my mother tongue (Italian) for over 30 years. In Italian dashes are used for dialog, so I had to change to quotation marks for dialogs in English, and that was unsettling for me at first. That's because I used them for thoughts, which I now write in italics (or as third person deep penetration) – while I used the italics only for telepathic conversations in Italian or to highlight words. In typewriters day I used all caps to highlight a word in a sentence, but thanks to computer I now use italics for either foreign words or to highlight words (like, I really mean it, damn it!)- right or not.

I learned the correct use of dashes for interrupting dialog when I was writing screenplays (when I had to switch from the British spelling I grew up with to American spelling and punctuation – so you see I'm fairly new to American spelling/punctuation, although it's now 10 years, out of 46 I might add) and I hated it (along with Courier New, but that's another story! ). For me interruptions or lingering sentences are all done with ellipses, and that's the only thing you'll ever find in my dialog. It wasn't fixed in Air, and I'm not going to change it now. I understand it might upset some editor or reader, but I guess it's now part of my voice (but I might be wrong with that, of course).

After six years with an English speaking offline writers group (where the British members are harder to please than the American when it comes to style and punctuation and everything) I've learned to take critiques for what they're worth and I've been refining my English voice at my best. Although I'm still learning and yes, comments and edits are useful anyway, even if I didn't use all of them (like I said, a 50%) because I don't want to sound different in newest releases from the rest.

I'm also going to rewrite a short story because I feel there's too much input from the first beta-reader and it doesn't sound like me (besides the character evolved in the meantime, so when I read the dialog I go "Yikes, this doesn't sound like her at all!"). I'm currently writing a new story, and I'm keeping in mind all the comments and edits made on my writing as I write.

I'm afraid I'm stuck in the middle of both styles anyway – I had no idea of what a comma splice was until someone from the David Farland writer's forum (and a Swedish friend) told me about it. Now I try to avoid it, but sometimes it just doesn't always "read right" to me… And yeah, I still use lots of exclamation marks. I don't find them distracting – but that probably comes from my years of reading comics!

And as I learned English by ear or something, I'm aware I do need someone to check my grammar as well! So, future beta-reader or critique partner or editor… now you know where I come from and where I stand!