Use a Style Guide

[Barbara]

You're so right! These things are not only distracting but often annoying.

I can eaily overlook punctuation errors, even spelling errors may happen, nobody is perfect, but there are some errors authors writing in English make I just can't understand. I'm no native speaker, I learned English at school. When beta-reading I use a dictionary to verify the spelling whenever I'm not sure, but I would never write "their" instead of "there" or "they're", "your" instead of "you're", "its" instead of "it's"...

I just don't get it. How is this possible? I doubt a style guide will help in those cases.

[C.]

At what point does a writer's total adherence to a style guide restrict creativity and stifle the poetic bounce of a story?

[Barbara]

If you want to brake the rules or invent your own style you have to be consistent.

There are authors who never use quotation marks, others use primarily half-sentences....some invent a totally new language.

There is room for poetic creativity.

[C.]

Between the World and Me, The Fire Next Time, The Bastard of Istanbul all, in some way, break rules. Fragmented sentences... higher level use of words without context clues (I don't mind looking up words)... great beats... I guess that's why I like them.