Spelling of the religious vocabulary in the online language counseling

Abstract

Spelling of the religious vocabulary (especially in the use of uppercase and lowercase letters) is one of the problems being solved by language counselors. Initially, the counselors could follow only the PWN spellcheck, language custom, analogies to other examples and their own intuition. In 2003 The Religious Language Commission of The Council for the Polish Language appointed the team that made the uniform rules of religious vocabulary spelling. The rules were published in a book titled Zasady pisowni słownictwa religijnego (ZPSR, 2004). After a few years they were revised and completed, and then given in the publication Pisownia słownictwa religijnego (PSR, 2011). The introductions to both of these books inform the rules of religious vocabulary spelling in ZPSR and PSR are more important than the principles in The PWN Great Spellcheck (Wielki słownik ortograficzny PWN); however, for the language counselors the spellcheck comes first. This paper collected all the problems of Internet users (to April 2015) solved by language counselors using ZPSR – the issues concerned eg. spelling of expressions with components holy/saint (święty) and blessed (błogosławiony), names of churches or religious concepts. Importantly, the online language counseling never referred to the PSR, which may mean that PSR is not sufficiently known to the Polish linguists.