Mention has been made of bad grammar in romance novels and I have to wonder if or why an editor would let a book go to print if it was so full of errors. Then I started thinking about "voice" -- the special something that an author has that defines his or her work. And I realized that what one person may perceive as bad grammar my actually be that particular author's "voice."
In
this article the writers gives some tips on finding your voice. Turning off the internal editor that makes you follow all the rules is one. I remember LabRat commenting positively about my use of sentence fragments in a piece I posted not long ago. To her it was my "voice" coming through. To another person it may have looked like I failed senior English.
One friend was working on line edits last week and was having trouble with a "baby" editor who wanted to take out the southern dialect that showed through in her writing. That's her "voice" and should never be messed with.
