Pet peeve: When creative writers attribute blatant technical errors that in no way enhance the narrative/serve a justifiable purpose to their "unique voice" or style.

Last night I read several pieces that, while interesting and fairly engaging, were absolutely littered with unnecessary commas.

There were commas

• between subject and predicate (which is terribly dated—a throwback to standards last seen in the early nineteenth century or so and no longer considered standard, much less correct)
• before adverbs of "when" (now, yesterday, tomorrow, today, later)
• to denote intonation (which is possibly the most pointless error of all because English has prosodic stress so inherent and natural that most non-native speakers have little trouble picking up on it, and, in the event you want to emphasize something in particular, there are italics for that)
• to indicate unambiguous pauses (which is the other super pointless one)

And like I said, nothing about it enhanced the narrative.  Dickens broke rules, Twain broke rules, Zusak breaks rules...but it all served a real purpose.

Anyway, I commented about the overuse/misuse of commas (making sure to be very tactful about it), and this girl was straight up like, "thanks for your evaluation, but I'm really not concerned with the technical aspects, actually" and "I've gotten a lot of feedback from other writers, teachers, etc., and they understand my use and how it gives my writing a unique voice."

It's really not a voice: there's no personality in it, and that's what a voice is all about.  Instead it's a tool, and it's a tool used to obscure her real voice because she's probably insecure about it, and that's a real shame.

I could—and should—go into more detail about this whole thing, but I'm really tired and I have a migraine so I'm going to nap.  But if you have any thoughts about this, you're welcome to start a discussion in the comments.