Important book related pedant question - any takers?!

[janeite]

I have noticed recently that more and more authors seem to have a real inability to use semi-colons, so that their writing is made up of long sentences joined together by commas and therefore very tedious and rather off-putting to read.

Justine Picardie's 'Daphne' is one example - totally unreadable for the reason above.

I'm now reading 'When Will There Be Good News?' and finding it is doing the same thing. I'm quite enjoying the story but the misplaced commas are driving me batty.

Am I being unreasonable?!

The improperly artculated sentences are okay for Reggie, particularly as her concerns for Jo increase and she's rushing to gether concerns out whilst somebody is actually bothering to listen to her. Unfortunately she does it for all of the other characters too and it gets wearing.

Policywonk - I'll try and dig it out later and give you some examples so you can help determine the particular type of misuse: be it 'semi-colons' on the line' or 'the wrong type of comma' or 'fatal full-stop on the 11.15 from Milton Keynes' or whatever!

There was [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/04/france.britishidentity an article in the Guardian] about the fate of the semicolon last year.
I love 'em.

Arg.
link

I'll be interested to see the examples janeite. I remember the book being very readable.

I loved the GP character btw, so damaged and yet so whole and nurturing. I felt like Reggie towards her -- just wanted to be near her and feel the warmth.

The thing that annoys me about Kate Atkinson is the sliding into farcical comedy. I like the wry humour in some of her characters (though I find some of the characters just ludicrous) but I don't like the contrived situations so much. I like how everyone in that story is incomplete, because of a death.