16 entries
Language & Culture
Grammar rules, word counts, and cultural 'facts' that dictionaries and style guides quietly walked back.
Changes here run from 1961 to 2025.
- Disproved8
- Updated6
- Replaced2
- UpdatedNot in textbooks yet
Internet slang isn't real English
Changed in2025TaughtSlang from the internet is not proper English. It's a fad, it won't last, and it certainly doesn't belong anywhere near a dictionary.
NowIn August 2025 the Cambridge Dictionary added 'skibidi', 'delulu', and 'tradwife' among 6,212 new words, phrases, and senses in a single year. The editors' stated bar was staying power: these words were tracked in real usage and stuck around long enough to earn entries.
- Updated
Cursive is obsolete, you'll never need it
Changed in2024TaughtWe don't do cursive anymore. It was dropped from the standards because you'll type everything that matters. Print your name, learn to keyboard, move on.
NowCursive is being legislated back into classrooms. California's AB 446, passed unanimously and in effect since January 2024, requires cursive instruction in grades one through six, joining a growing list of states that have re-mandated it after Common Core dropped it in 2010.
- Replaced
You'll take the SAT with a No. 2 pencil
Changed in2024TaughtBring two sharpened No. 2 pencils. Fill the bubble completely. Erase cleanly. Three hours, a paper booklet, and a proctor telling you when to put your pencil down.
NowThe paper SAT no longer exists. As of March 9, 2024, the test is digital-only, taken on a laptop or tablet through an app called Bluebook. It is also a different test: about two hours instead of three, adaptive, with shorter reading passages and a calculator allowed on all of the math.
- Disproved
Good readers guess words from context
Changed in2023TaughtStuck on a word? Look at the picture. Think about what would make sense in the sentence. Check the first letter and take a guess. Sounding it out letter by letter is a last resort.
NowIn the 2023 legislative session alone, eight US states banned this method, called three-cueing, from K-3 classrooms: Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Decades of cognitive science show skilled readers decode words letter by letter; guessing from context is what struggling readers do.
- Updated
'Irregardless' is not a word
Changed in2020Taught'Irregardless' is not a word. It is a double negative and an illiterate mangling of 'regardless'. Never use it.
NowMerriam-Webster confirmed in 2020 that it has been in the dictionary since 1934 and in recorded use since 1795. It is a word, and it is labelled nonstandard, which means it exists and you should still avoid it in formal writing.
- Replaced
Put two spaces after a period
Changed in2020TaughtTyping class: two spaces after every full stop. One space is a sign of carelessness.
NowMicrosoft Word began flagging two spaces as an error in 2020. Every major style guide, Chicago, AP, MLA, and APA, specifies one. The convention was a workaround for monospaced typewriters, and typewriters are gone.
- Disproved
'They' is plural, never use it for one person
Changed in2017Taught"Each student should bring their book" is an error. Use 'he' as the generic singular, or rewrite as 'he or she'. Singular 'they' is sloppy and modern.
NowSingular 'they' is accepted by every major authority. The AP Stylebook admitted it in 2017, Chicago's 17th edition in 2017, and Merriam-Webster named it Word of the Year in 2019 and added the nonbinary sense. It has been in continuous use since the 1300s.
- Updated
'Literally' can never mean 'figuratively'
Changed in2013Taught'Literally' means actually, in fact, without exaggeration. Saying "I literally died" is a mistake, because you did not.
NowMerriam-Webster added the intensifier sense in 2013, and the OED has recorded it since 2011, noting use since 1769. Dictionaries describe how words are used rather than legislating how they should be, and this use is 250 years old.
- Disproved
Playing Mozart to babies makes them smarter
Changed in2010TaughtClassical music raises IQ. Play Mozart to infants and they develop better spatial reasoning. Georgia handed out a free classical CD to every newborn.
NowA 2010 meta-analysis of 39 studies covering over 3,000 subjects found no reliable cognitive benefit. The original 1993 study involved 36 college students, tested one narrow spatial task, and the effect lasted about ten to fifteen minutes.
- Disproved
I before E except after C
Changed in2009TaughtI before E, except after C. The reliable spelling rhyme, drilled from primary school.
NowThe UK government's National Strategies advice in 2009 told teachers to stop teaching it, on the grounds that there are so many exceptions it is not worth the confusion. Analyses of large word lists find the rule fails more often than it holds.
- Updated
New words don't just get invented
Changed in2006TaughtThe dictionary is a fixed authority. Words are either in it or they are not, and made-up words are not real English.
NowDictionaries add hundreds of words a year based on documented usage. 'Google' became a verb in Merriam-Webster and the OED in 2006. Selfie, podcast, unfriend, ghost, doomscroll, and rizz all entered major dictionaries, most of them after 2010.
- Disproved
Never end a sentence with a preposition
Changed in1998TaughtA preposition is not a word to end a sentence with. Rewrite it: "With whom are you going?", not "Who are you going with?"
NowThere is no such rule in English, and there never was. Merriam-Webster, Chicago, and the Oxford dictionaries all reject it. It was a personal preference expressed by the poet John Dryden in 1672, based on Latin, and it hardened into schoolroom law.
- Disproved
Never split an infinitive
Changed in1998TaughtNever put a word between 'to' and its verb. "To boldly go" is an error, and it should be "to go boldly." Red pen.
NowEvery major usage authority now accepts split infinitives. Fowler defended them, the Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster call the prohibition unfounded, and the 2016 AP Stylebook explicitly permitted them. The rule was invented by nineteenth-century writers imitating Latin.
- Disproved
Eskimos have a hundred words for snow
Changed in1991TaughtEskimos have dozens, or hundreds, of words for snow, proving that language shapes how you perceive the world.
NowThe claim collapsed under examination. Inuit and Yupik languages are polysynthetic, meaning they build long words from roots and suffixes, so counting "words" is meaningless: any language can do the same by that method. The root inventory for snow is comparable to English's.
- Disproved
Vikings wore horned helmets
Changed in1990TaughtViking raiders wore helmets with horns curving from the sides, as seen in every illustration, cartoon, and sports mascot.
NowNo horned helmet has ever been found in a Viking burial or settlement. Exactly one reasonably complete Viking-age helmet exists, the Gjermundbu helmet from Norway, and it has no horns. The image was invented for a Wagner opera in 1876.
- Updated
'Ain't' isn't a word either
Changed in1961Taught'Ain't' ain't a word. It is not in the dictionary, it marks you as uneducated, and using it in writing is an error.
NowIt has been in dictionaries for centuries and is labelled nonstandard. Webster's Third New International Dictionary included it without condemnation in 1961 and caused a national scandal. It originated as a perfectly respectable contraction used by the English upper class.