Mostly, I just wanted to try and point out that a question or exclamation mark isn’t always needed. It all depends on the person asking and how something is said. It also depends on whether the text makes something clear, thus negating the need for added punctuation.
Really, that’s all.
But yeah, language is fun and glad you see it that way. I don’t claim to be perfect and I’m not sure anyone is, and there’s the fact that grammar can be subjective. Like, where I might put a comma, someone else might leave it out or put it elsewhere. Then there’s choices made for artistic reasons. I once wrote a brief piece, about 100 - 200 words maybe, where the language was broken. I was trying to capture the thought process of someone who might be a bit slow mentally, so thoughts and sentences were clipped.
For me, while the story is important, I do a lot of reading to study the technical aspects and styles. So I have quite a few books bought for that reason that I haven’t actually read. To put it into perspective, perhaps I’m too technically minded for my own good, especially when it comes to conciseness. Right now, I have notepad++ open, and I’m working on a Hosted Games project. It’s 1,680 words long currently and after I’ve finished the next two scenes, of five (the reader will only see 3), the chapter will be over. I imagine I’ll lose a fair bit in word count too and for a interactive story with the branching, it’s not really a high word count at all. But on the flip side, I try to make the most of what words I do use. And I find language itself very intriguing the way grammar can be twisted to suit a specific need. It’s sometimes like puzzle too, like how can I rephrase this so it says the same but uses less words, or has a bigger impact?
There’s no worry as well about whether or not you were challenging what I was partial to. I never thought that for a moment and I hope you didn’t take what I said the wrong way. I’d like to try and explain where I’m coming from though, even though it’s likely not necessary.
For me, writing is a craft. Something honed over years of work. During my time on writing forums, I used to spend a lot of time critiquing the technical aspects, because I feel that is less subjective than the content. I’d run across things like:
“Go.” he said. (There, it’s either “Go.” or “Go,” he said.)
That sort of thing, you know? It makes me ask if the writer has picked up a book before, because I don’t know of any books where that’s the grammatical norm. It could be that it’s normal in other countries, but in the UK and America, I know it’s not the norm, which is all I’m aware of.
So really, whether right or wrong, it just makes me think the writer hasn’t taken their time to hone their craft and such when I see things that don’t look right and I can’t see a good reason for it. Like I said, it’s not how I’d write it, but I can at least understand the rationale behind ‘?!’ It saves words at the end of the day. (As an aside, I’m well aware I made a mistake ‘I think people should make their writing speak for themselves without adding a lot of needless punctuation marks too.’ in an earlier post. )
Anyhow, you got me going, as I love discussing the technical aspects of writing. Sorry everyone! And hopefully I’ll be able to show that work soon.