ANP
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 11:58
Do you write mushroom or toadstool? April Fool’s Joke or April Fools’ Day? Barbecuing or barbecuing? The answer is: it depends on which doctrine you adhere to when it comes to spelling: the official, ‘Green’ or the alternative, ‘White’ spelling.
Until today, the NOS, like some national newspapers and the Society of Our Language, followed the alternative spelling. That is changing: from now on the editors will use the official spelling, as can be found in the Dutch Language Glossary of the Language Union.
The terms ‘Green’ and ‘White’ date from an analogous past: older readers may remember the Green Book. This was floating around in all newsrooms, government agencies and all kinds of other places where correct Dutch had to be written.
Gunpowder fumes
Until a heated discussion broke out in 2005 following yet another spelling reform. Pancake became pancake and there were other changes that were not well received everywhere. NRC, de Volkskrant, Trouw and NOS rebelled and joined the alternative spelling that had been used for some time by Onze Taal, with the accompanying Spelling Guide, in the walk ‘het Witte Boekje’.
But the gunpowder fumes have long since cleared. The disagreement between the Language Union and Onze Taal is over. On closer inspection, there are not that many differences and we find some ‘White’ choices difficult to defend. For example, NOS has been writing per se (Green) instead of per se (White) for some time now. The latter version always generated many angry reactions, also because such a concise word sometimes appears in headlines.
The same applies, for example, to in advance (White: in advance) and insofar as (White: insofar). Furthermore, we have long been used to the Green ‘pancake’. And judging by the emails that arrive at [email protected], we are not the only ones: we regularly receive comments from readers and viewers who say that we have made a spelling mistake, while it often concerns the White Spelling.
The number of ‘White spellers’ is simply declining, and that is logical: after all, only Green spelling is taught at school. It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to explain that NOS does not adhere to the official rules, but uses an ‘alternative spelling’.
The blurring distinction is also reflected in the ‘Tallocket’ van Onze Taal, where we have until now consulted for spelling issues. There, the Green and White versions of words are always presented next to each other and that was confusing for many editors. By choosing ‘Green’, the NOS Language Committee hopes that more clarity will arise.
2023-11-03 10:58:58
#NOS #switches #official #Green #spelling
