I was flattered when my granddaughter asked my advice on her high school English paper.

She wanted to use a slang word she’d recently fallen in love with, but didn’t know if she could get away with it without having the teacher deduct a point from her essay.

Normally she wouldn’t worry about losing just a point, but she got a “B” on her first English paper of the quarter and needed to get her grade back up to where she can get into the University of $80,000-a-year.

Whatever the reason, I was delighted she cared enough to consult me on her choice of words.

In an age in which so much written expression of the young takes the form of text messages, tweets, memes and listicles, words become almost incidental; as I peck this out on my iPad keyboard, emoji choices outnumber the 26-letter choices by about a thousand to one.

As a Jurassic journalist from the mainstream media, I’m seldom asked my opinions about writing anymore, even though my most popular column — the end-of-month “flASHback” — is essentially a listicle.

The word my granddaughter had fallen in love with was “yaint,” a contraction of contractions combining the Southern expressions “y’all” and “ain’t.”

I was immediately as charmed by the word as she was; it reminded me of one of those Hawaii pidgin words like “hammajang” or “bulai” that evoke a meaning and sense of place just from the twang of it.

(My iPad spell check suggested I should change “twang” to “tongue” and offered me an emoji of a panting tongue to use in place of the actual word.)

Most of all, I loved the many arguments a word such as “yaint” could arouse — all of which beat the hell out of the endless arguments about Honolulu rail, GMOs and Donald Trump.

First you can argue about the question my granddaughter raised: Is it appropriate to use lowbrow slang like “yaint” in a formal English paper?

Then you can argue about whether the word means “you all have not” (as in “yaint seen nothing yet”) or “you all are not” (“yaint so funny”) — or both.

Finally you can settle into a long night of arguing about whether the word should have no apostrophes, which seems the most popular use in memes; one apostrophe (and whether it should be “y’aint” or “yain’t”); or the ungainly two apostrophes (“y’ain’t”).

All of the grammarians out there who enjoy breaking my okole for occasionally mixing up “who” and “whom” can knock yourselves out on this one.

As for my granddaughter, I can only hope her English teacher agrees with me that a kid who gives this much thought to the palette of words available to her doesn’t deserve to have a point deducted.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.