Of course not. That’s the exception that proves the rule.
Cute, but it does no such thing.
**Bosstone ** gets at the heart of teaching English. You can see here the insidious effects of propaganda on the young. Tell kids over and over that style and usage have rules equivalent to those of grammar and spelling and they will insist to their dying day that this is true, no matter how much evidence to the contrary they’re presented with. If people are this resistant to education on a subject that is at its heart education, it’s no wonder than people are so resistant when confronted about their basic childhood beliefs on nationalism, religion, politics, and culture.
But if you can try to put this childhood propaganda to one side, you should be able to acknowledge that while grammar and spelling have, at the simpler levels, a series of right/wrong answers that are fine for grading tests, style and usage are a matter of art. Teaching style and usage should be put together with teaching English literature rather than English linguistics. If you can bring yourself to understand that these are two different fields wrongly lumped together under “English” and that therefore they should be taught in different ways, there’s no longer any controversy.
As for jargon, well, yes, some jargon is bad. But jargon has a point. Most jargon exists because it gives very precise technical definitions to words, even if those definitions are not those of the common language. People inside the field instantly know exactly what the term means and everybody in the field shares the same definition. This is enormously helpful. If you don’t like a piece of jargon, don’t use it. But you should at least understand its purpose before arbitrarily discarding it.
If it makes you feel any better you didn’t totally fail. The “so so” doesn’t mean mediocre without a hyphen.
