Penni,
To a point yes, beyond that point no. At a certain level an individual quirk can become an aesthetic disaster. It should be fun for the writer, as E says, but it has to be fun, intelligible, and ideally pleasing to the reader as well. I wouldn't apply the same standard to an SI post (even on this thread) that I would to work intended for publication, but it is important that standards exist.
It's reasonable to break rules, if you do it for a specific reason, to gain a specific desired effect. Breaking them because you don't know them, or don't care, is another story. I've often heard the E.E. Cummings precedent invoked to defend inattention to rules. When I do, I always bring up Cummings' early novel "The Enormous Room", which is a classic example of grammatically correct prose. He mastered the rules before he started breaking them.
Steve |
