Can Less Be More? About the Author’s Concept of a Spelling Dictionary

Abstract

The author presents the assumptions of his recently published spelling dictionary of the Polish language (Slownik ortograficzny wspolczesnego jezyka polskiego z poradnikiem. Poznan: Silva Rerum, 2022). The article discusses the features of the term ‘author’s spelling dictionary’, as well as the complexity of Polish spelling and punctuation rules. The main part of the text is dedicated to the structure of the dictionary’s explanatory section and entry part. The author’s aim was to create a dictionary based on explaining Polish orthography in a way that is quickly understandable to the general reader. The dictionary and its explanatory section may be regarded as popular science, although they also contain strictly scientific and meta-scientific structures. The distinctive feature of the dictionary is that its entry list contains only those words in which a language user is likely to make a mistake. The author places special emphasis on the claim that he has created a spelling dictionary that teaches the mechanisms of the language and does not require the reader to constantly check for separate words.