Professional paper
When Orthography, Following the “Principle of Arbitrariness”, Brings Confusion into Order
Mate Milas
orcid.org/0000-0003-2749-8948
; Elementary School Većeslava Holjevca, Zagreb
Abstract
The paper analyses the spelling rule about the use of dashes to mark the reported speech
in the “Croatian Orthography” published by the Institute for Croatian Language and Linguistics
(2013). This rule, namely, differs from the solutions in spelling manuals from the
1940s onwards and from the publishers’ and school speller practices that were uniform for
at least 70-odd years. Analysing the principles stated in the foreword to “Croatian Orthography”,
the author wants to show that this change is not based on any of these principles,
but is, on the contrary, completely subjective. The author also wants to draw attention to the
fact that authors of orthographic manuals should not have such great freedom in changing
some established spelling rules.
Keywords
Croatian spelling, writing of reported speech, normative principles
Hrčak ID:
266538
URI
Publication date:
1.6.2021.
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