Opinion: Don't nobody talk good no more?

It's been part of the American ethos that we talk informally, but we write in "formal English." I don't know who introduced that rule or why it exists. Perhaps it's a "vestigial remnant" from a time when only the elite had any formal education. But it seems to me that it is a self-defeating custom. In a way, it's kind of like being bilingual in one language.

When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher told me that once people begin to write correctly, they will start to speak correctly. Mrs. Donaldson was young and very pretty, so naturally, as a heterosexual 16-year-old boy, I did everything possible to impress her. And the habit of using correct English when I spoke stuck.

For the most part.