In matters of language the legal or standard practice cannot be so easily determined. Owing to the fact that there is no legislative body in language, no specified court of appeal, there is occasionally lack of agreement as to what shall and what shall not be recognized as the accepted use of the language. The government of the language is not as fully and as definitely organized as is the government of the business and other overt acts of men.

In many instances, or rather in most instances, there is unanimity of opinion, and then we have an unquestioned and general standard use. The great body of English usage is thus made up of forms of language with respect to which there is practically no difference of opinion. Sometimes, however, due to various causes, such as the coming together of two speakers from two different geographical or social speech communities, instances occur in which there arises difference of opinion. In one community or one group, he don't, or these kind of people, or I will, for the future, will be accepted as the conventional, standard speech of the community. When they are used in this community or this group, they express their thought completely, and carry with them no connotation to the discredit of the speaker. In another geographical community, or by certain speakers within a community, these usages will be condemned as not standard, therefore as not satisfactorily expressive, and consequently as "wrong" or "incorrect." Who shall decide?

Nothing can decide but the observation of custom. What is defended as customary use by a community, or even by a single speaker, to carry the matter to its final analysis, is standard, or conventional, or "right," or "correct," in that community or for that speaker. The question of correctness and incorrectness, that is, of standard, can only arise when a conflict of opinion arises, and this conflict can only be decided by such an extension of the field of observation of customary use, on the particular question, as will determine finally what the true custom is. That this is often a difficult matter is not to be denied; it is, however, only one of the many ways in which man is driven to an observation of his surroundings and to a continual adaption of his conduct to these surroundings. The importance of standard speech for the welfare of the community should also be recognized. It is only by the acceptance of general custom that speech can be made effective at all, and it is every speaker's duty to follow the best custom of the speech as he views it. Not idiosyncrasy, not singularity, should be the ideal in speech, but a wise adjustment to and harmony with the general custom of the speech.

Standard English

Standard, and in that sense conventional and "correct," English is consequently not altogether the same thing as good English. We have said that standard English is the customary use of a community when it is recognized and accepted as the customary use of the community. Beyond this, however, is the larger field of good English, any English that justifies itself by accomplishing its end, by hitting the mark. It is plain that standard English must continually refresh itself by accepting the creations of good English. It has always been so in the past, and so it is in the present. If the standardizing tendency were carried to its fullest extent, it would result in a complete fixity of language. If by following standard use one should have to follow customary use, it is plain that there could be no place in the standard speech for innovation--all would be summed up in the simple formula, Follow custom. Language would thus soon cease to be positively expressive; it would soon come to have no more personal value than an algebraic formula. But fortunately the standardizing tendency can never be carried out to its completest development, and opposed to it, or at least complementing it, will always be the ideal of good English in the broadest sense of the words. All that the standardizing tendency can do is to fix a vague and general outline of the language. This indeed is necessary and valuable to prevent a complete chaos of pronunciation, of vocabulary, and of grammar. But within these vague limits there is broad freedom. Poets and prose writers, lively imaginations of all kinds, in speech as in literature, are continually widening the bounds of the conventional and standard language by adding to it something that was not there before. They must do so if speech is ever to rise above the dead level of the commonplace. "Justice of perception consists in knowing how and when and where to deviate from the beaten track." But deviation there must be, and the persons who attain an individual style in the use of language are those who seize their opportunities as they present themselves. To them the prime and necessary virtue in language is expressiveness, and, as complementing this, there should correspond on the part of the hearer or reader the willingness to receive the expression as fully as it was intended. Again, however, we insist on the continual application of the test of good English--it must be satisfactorily expressive. If it does not justify itself by accomplishing its purpose, if it shocks the prejudices, or the traditions, of the person to whom it is directed, or if it be unintelligible, if in any way it fails to secure a satisfactory and unhindered transmission of the thought, then to the extent of this failure it is bad English. And it is bad not because it has failed to satisfy any condition of theoretical, ideal excellence, any notions of standard, but because in the actual practice of the art of language it has failed to produce the result for which that art exists.

Modern English: Its Growth and Present Use, by George Philip Krapp, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1909.