This paper discusses two chapters of the rules of Hungarian orthography: those on upper vs. lower case initials and on proper nouns, respectively. It presents five years of work of a committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences devoted to the regulation of spelling, the finished proposal, the essence of proposed changes, and compares the latter with earlier regulations. It covers contributions and suggestions coming from external experts, too. Briefly, it can be said that the regulation of writing proper nouns is planned to be modified in very minor ways only, hence tradition and permanence continue to be the guiding principles there. Contributors have suggested that the revised handbook of orthography should be simple in its formulation and easy to comprehend, the interests of general education should be taken into account more than before, and methodological considerations should also be observed.
This paper surveys the system of spelling compounds as presented in the current (11th) edition of Rules of Hungarian Orthography. Various problems are identified on the basis of an analysis of the chapter of the rulebook concerning the principles of spelling compounds. The presence and proportions of grammatical and spelling-specific considerations in the relevant rules are discussed. Problems are pointed out with respect to the content or phrasing of individual rules, or to the specific examples occurring in them. The authoress is a member of the Hungarian Language Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, working at present on the preparation of the 12th edition of Rules of Hungarian Orthography. In the framework of that larger project, the authoress presents suggestions as to how the problems noted could be overcome, and presents a new version of the relevant chapter that she wrote with that aim in mind.
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