These were never rules at all (you're absolutely right to include them with scare quotes); that's the worst part of it. Teaching people how to write "properly" in English while they're in school honestly has almost nothing in common with the way people actually speak, write, and read, and very little to do with publishing standards or the ever-changing language. Those zombie rules make me crazy! As a book editor, I can vouch that those supposed "rules" are the things we have to reeducate writers about the most.