Common punctuation error
I see lots of different kinds of punctuation and capitalization errors, but it just occurred to me that there's one I see remarkably often: using a period at the end of a line of dialogue and capitalizing the beginning of the following "She said" or "He said." Like this:
"That'll be fifteen zlotys." She said.
"That's a lot of money." He said.
"Is it too much?" She asked.
And so on. (Sometimes people do this once or twice by accident, but I'm talking about the stories where it's consistent throughout the story.) I always figured it was just people who'd never learned the right way to do it, but I see it so often that I'm beginning to wonder if it was ever taught that way in some place or time. Maybe it's just that people learn you're supposed to put a period at the end of a sentence and capitalize all sentences, but nobody ever teaches them that punctuation for dialogue is handled in an unusual way?
(Standard disclaimer: I know you're all about to tell me about the brilliant work of experimentalist stylistic genius that you wrote that uses this extremely important and valid literary technique. No need. If you do it intentionally, I don't object to it, though it would probably still irritate me. The stories I'm talking about are not doing it as an interesting stylistic diversion; the authors clearly don't know there's anything unusual about their approach.)
