In recent years, I’ve read a couple of books by highly-acclaimed literary authors who use no punctuation. Well, almost none. They don’t use quotation marks for dialogue. Cormack McCarthy is one, and I do not want to read another of his books because it drives me absolutely crazy. (And that’s a short trip!)  On the other hand, the novel Dirt Music by Tim Winton didn’t bother me as much. I think because the dialogue was properly attributed with actions, reactions or taglines. And the author started a new paragraph for each new speaker. McCarthy doesn’t always, and sometimes refers to two different characters as “he” a couple of times within the same paragraph. Confusing? To say the least. That said, McCarthy is a best-selling author and has won many awards. He knows his literature and he knows the rules. I always tell my writing students and editing clients that it may seem like we are spending a lot of time on “rules” when maybe we should be concentrating on writing. But…we ...