The Mencken Standard — What American Is

DECLARATION · THE ACADEMY · OPPOSING CAMP — WEBSTER

— THE CASE FOR DESCRIPTION —

The Standard Is What People Actually Say.

Every American speaks American. The question for the standard is not which speakers to correct, but which patterns to record. The Mencken camp argues that authority follows usage, not the other way around.

The English have a Royal Academy. The French have an Académie. The Italians have the Accademia della Crusca. None of them, in three hundred years of effort, has succeeded in making any speaker say anything they were not already inclined to say. Standardization by decree has the same record in language that prohibition has in drink.

What standardization can do — what it has always done in practice — is record the patterns that have already won. Webster's 1828 dictionary did not invent American spelling. It documented the spellings that American printers were already using and, by collecting them in one place, gave them a center. That is the Mencken camp's working model.

Authority follows usage. Where it does not, it follows nothing.

The work is therefore observational. We collect the corpus — the speeches, the songs, the broadcasts, the comment threads, the text messages, the courtroom transcripts. We tabulate the forms. We publish what we find. The standard is a description of what American speakers, taken as a whole, actually do.

The Webster camp will object that this gives no guidance to learners. We answer that the most useful guidance for a learner is the guidance that reflects what they will actually encounter in the wild. A standard that pretends grammar exists only in schoolbook form is teaching half the language.

This is the Mencken project. It is no more and no less than recording the speech of a continent and asking the Academy to certify what we have found.

— MARGINALIA · I —

On the Question of "Slang"

The category is suspect. A "slang" word is a word the prescriber does not approve of yet. Cool was slang in 1948. Like as a hedge was slang in 1985. The corpus does not recognize the category; only the prescriber does.

— MARGINALIA · II —

On the Black American Question

Black American is not a deviation from American. It is a continuous and structured speech tradition that has supplied American with most of its rhythmic vocabulary for two centuries. The descriptive method records it as American because it is American.

— MARGINALIA · III —

On Mencken Himself

The man was a difficult ally. His prejudices were several and well documented. The method he founded, however, is sound: observe, tabulate, publish. The camp inherits the method, not the man.

— MARGINALIA · IV —

On the Vote

The Academy's vote will not change what speakers do. It will, at best, recognize what they already do. We submit our descriptions as evidence; the vote is procedural.

— FIELD OBSERVATIONS —

What the Corpus Shows

A working sample of contested points and what observation, rather than prescription, finds.

Color or colour?

color · 99.4%

The British form appears in American writing only in proper names ("The Color Guard's Honour"), self-conscious archaism, and direct quotation of British sources.

— Corpus: 2.4 billion American word tokens, 2010–2025 —

Singular "they"?

standard

In continuous use since the 14th century. Currently dominant in informal American writing and frequent in formal. The Academy is a half-millennium late to ratify it.

— Corpus: COCA, NOW, plus 18M social tokens —

iii

Habitual "be"?

standard · Black American register

Marks recurring or characteristic action, distinct from present-progressive meaning. The descriptive method records the aspect marker where the grammar actually carries it.

— Corpus: Black American oral history archive —

"Finna"?

standard · Black American register

Contraction of "fixing to," itself a Southern American future-marker dating to the 18th century. In active use across multiple American speech communities. Standard.

— Corpus: 4.1M social tokens, 2018–2025 —

Oxford comma?

variable

Used in 64% of American academic prose, 41% of American journalism, 28% of American informal writing. The standard records its variability rather than legislating it.

— Corpus: COCA + journalism subcorpus —

"Y'all"?

standard, second person plural

Solves a real gap in standard English (no distinct second-person plural). Originating in Southern American, now in active use across all American regions. Functional standard.

— Corpus: COCA + regional dialect surveys —

vii

"Literally" as intensifier?

recorded · contested

Documented in this sense since 1769 (Frances Brooke). The complaint is older than half the words the complainants use without complaint.

— Corpus: OED + 19th-century American novels —

viii

"Bussin'," "rizz," "no cap"?

recorded; status pending

Slang turnover in American is rapid and continuous; the camp tracks but does not certify until five-year persistence is observed across speech communities.

— Corpus: continuous social monitoring —

— METHODOLOGY —

How the Mencken Camp Decides

The Mencken camp does not decide. It describes. For each contested point, the working method is fourfold:

First, define the corpus — the body of American speech and writing within which the question will be examined. The corpus must be large, current, and representative across regions, registers, and speech communities.

Second, tabulate the forms in use. Frequency, distribution, register, and trend over time.

Third, publish the finding without recommendation. The camp records what is; it does not prescribe what ought to be.

Fourth, submit the description to the Academy. The Academy's vote may certify, contest, or set aside. The camp's responsibility ends with the description.