The Befuddling Case of the Vanishing Quotation Marks

In the past week, I've read two new books where the authors decided to ommit the conventional double quotation marks to set off the characters' direct dialogue. I'm not certain why they elected to do so, but I can say the practice is more than a little annoying to me. Sometimes I don't have a problem with the missing quotation marks. It's easy to spot the dialogue when you get into the author's prose rhythms and writing style. However, these two books I'm speaking of mash the dialogue into long paragraphs, making it onerous, slow reading. Bad idea if you're trying to sell books. I don't want to spend my attention trying to dig out when the characters are speaking. It detracts from my following and, perhaps, enjoying the narrative. Maybe the practice is supposed to be a literary or artistic deal. The pity is both stories were intriguing reads. But again and again, I had to go back to see where the dialogue started and stopped. Readers are picky about their likes and dislikes--believe me, I hear about it all the time from the readers of my books. Would I buy another book from an author not using simple but necessary quotation marks? Most likely not. I only hope this no quotes business isn't a new trend that will solidify into the norm for most fiction writers. I personally know one author who will never do it. I'm too old school, I suppose.

For further reading, this link is to an interesting 2008 article from the Wall Street Journal on the same topic: http://is.gd/tPTvVw