If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all.
My, haven't we travelled a long way from the currency of that particular piece of folk wisdom.
In certain circles, the opposite is now preferred: it is better to say something bad rather than saying nothing at all.
Because saying something bad is a form of expression; it is communication; it is the stringing together of conscious thought; it is, at the very least, a sign of intelligence even if that intelligence - and the mode of expression it spawns - is akin to the burblings of loquacious pond amoeba.
I should correct myself: "say" actually means "write", because what we are talking about here is the recent revelation that British high school students are being awarded marks for writing obscene phrases in their English tests "because it shows at least some ability to convey a message".
The chief examiner responsible for training other markers told The Times newspaper that the phrase "f... off" deserved some marks.
The pupils deploying such a sophisticated form of expression met the requirement for the minimum marks by demonstrating simple sequencing of ideas.
"It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skill we are looking for, like conveying some meaning and some spelling," the examiner said.
Methinks the brave man has opened a can of worms.
Imagine how popular exams might become if hundreds of thousands of sullen schoolboys and girls realised that they could call their teachers every name under the sun in their final exam papers and be positively rewarded for it.
And, of course, anyone who has ever eavesdropped on a bad-tempered hormonal 16-year-old who's just had his PlayStation privileges withdrawn for a month, will know just how creative teens can be with a limited vocabulary.
It's like a five-note symphony: the permutations and combinations can add up to an impressive stream of invective - or in this case, a somewhat pointed "essay".
That's before we even broach the philosophical underpinning upon which such brave-new-wordism is constructed.
It is education as therapy.
Language as primal scream, a small evolutionary step up from the grunt, a form of communication with which many 16-year-olds are intimately familiar.
We had a similar little row in this country a year or two back when a NCEA functionary pushed the education boat out with the notion that text language had a place in conventional exam answers.
I think that one has quietly sunk beneath the furore that engulfed it - and quite right, too.
Because children arrive in teenhood with the dictionary of text-speak preloaded into their frontal lobes, and a dexterity of digit that is truly remarkable.
Likewise - as if by osmosis - they independently achieve a fluency with terms that are beyond the pale in polite company.
And - with apologies in advance to the dyslexia society - it's a point of pride for them to know that fcuk is a fashion label and not quite the word they're after.
They don't need to be taught this stuff; and they don't need to be rewarded for using it, either.
If they really are that uptight, then they probably need counselling - or a good run round the rugby field; and if they are being obnoxious, antisocial and just plain rude, then they don't deserve the marks, either.
Not that New Zealand Cricket would necessarily agree.
It has just let off the hook Black Cap Scott Styris following a spectacularly grumpy piece of text sledging he sent to former fellow international-turned-columnist Mark Richardson.
Styris objected to an article in which Richardson addressed the infamous run-out controversy in the recent one-day series against England; the scribe suggested that English skipper Paul Collingwood was within his rights to put the decision in the hands of the umpires.
Styris responded with a series of text messages that would make a 16-year-old schoolboy blush, describing Richardson as a "geriatric ....-head".
He went on to trump this with a stunning effusion of bilious "prose".
Decorum suggests it should not be repeated here, even in its abbreviated form.
After all, this is a family journal, not an exam paper to be littered with expletives; and neither is it a manual for appropriate behaviour of the country's top cricket representatives.
If it were either, we can only assume that the loquacious Mr Styris would have earned himself an A+ - and, quite probably, a pay rise.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
