Just as much as American mothers ban swear words from their children’s vocabulary, English teachers refuse to let their students use what they call dead words. Dead words are weak adjectives or verbs. Good is just as vulgar to an English teacher’s ear as sh*t is to a matriarch’s ear.

Educators preach to us that taboo words will weaken or maybe even ruin a paper.

My mom tells me that when I curse, I dumb myself down, but is that true? Does taboo word choice really exterminate any meaning from an argument? Can a student write a meaningful paper with an English teacher’s forbidden word choices?

An idea is an idea. A word is a word. And a synonym is a word that has the same meaning as another word. Changing the word good for one of its synonyms, like marvelous, satisfactory, great, extraordinary, superb, or wonderful, just changes the sound of a sentence, but not the meaning.

A paper is a list of words that together is an idea. It is not bad to use a word that says what it needs to say; it is bad to use a word that is not good at saying what you want it to say.

It does not matter what an article sounds like; it matters what the article means. The words “rise up lights” sounds like “razor blades” in an Australian accent, but the words are an order to turn on the lights. A sound may lie, but words tell the truth.

It does not matter what the word is as long as it helps make the idea awesome.

I bet you didn’t realize it, but I just made a pretty DAMN GOOD argument with plenty of taboo words.

So, I say, “Taboo words, my a*s.”