Rules against most?

[Barbara Need]

I am teaching developmental writing these days and one of my students
threw me this evening. We working on organizing ideas and I was
putting together a paragraph from what we have and I wrote a sentence
that began something like the following: Next, most students use the
internet for communication. When I was just about done with the
paragraph, one of my students (40-ish black male, if that should be
relevant--Chicagoland) said he thought I should delete "most" and he
expressed surprise that a writing instructor should use this
construction. I asked him to say why he found the surprising, but he
could not articulate it beyond he didn't expect an writing instructor
to use. Any guesses as to what rule I violated?

It did occur to me as I was driving home that he may have been told
not to use most when it is short for almost, but I'm not sure.

Barbara

Barbara Need
Chicago

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