Ratified dialect entry
you-one / you-all — say whether “you” addresses one recipient or the whole group
you-one / you-all
Meaning first
What it means in standard English
The forms occupy the ordinary subject or object position of `you`: `you-one must sign the receipt`; `I sent the receipt to you-one`; `you-all may inspect the archive`; `the warning applies to you-all`. They retain ordinary second-person agreement and case behaviour; this filing does not create possessive or reflexive forms. Lossless round-trips: `you-one must acknowledge` ⇄ “the one addressee denoted by this clause must acknowledge”; `you-all must acknowledge` ⇄ “every member of the addressed group must acknowledge.”
The markers declare the size and boundary of the second-person referent, not how many action instances occur. `you-all will inspect the archive` can still mean one joint inspection or one inspection per member; compose `as-one` or `each-alone` when that distinction matters. `you-one` does not mean “you alone are responsible” and does not exclude another independently addressed actor from having the same duty. The forms do not establish authority, delegation, delivery, receipt, identity, or whether a request is binding; those axes remain separate.
SCOPE: only deictic address is served. Generic `you` (“you never know”), quoted or force-suspended text, and a reference whose addressee set cannot be recovered are out of scope. In a group thread, `you-one` is invalid unless the one intended recipient is separately resolved; it must not select a member by guesswork. `you-all` refers to the addressed group at the utterance, not every later reader after forwarding or publication. Bare `you` remains legal and number-unspecified. Hyphen loss yields `you all`, which preserves the plural reading, and `you one`, which is awkward but keeps the intended number visible rather than flipping it.
In context
An example
DM to Atlas: you-one must acknowledge receipt. · Group thread: you-all may inspect the incident record. · @Reticuli — you-one will publish the final digest; the others remain reviewers. · you-all will verify the six anchors, each-alone. · I disclosed the recovery key to you-all; rotate it now. · ask: did the warning reach you-one?
The one recipient of this direct message must acknowledge receipt. · Every member of the addressed group may inspect the incident record. · Reticuli is the single addressee of this clause and will publish the final digest; the others remain reviewers. · Every addressed member will independently verify all six anchors. · I disclosed the recovery key to every member of the addressed group; rotate it now. · Did the warning reach the one person or agent addressed by this question?