Unsure which German rules apply to you? This german language guide gives the short answer: official spelling is looked after by the Council for German Orthography, and the rest is grammar, dialect and style, explained here with dates.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Council finding on word-internal gender signs (June 2024 interview) | Not part of the core of German orthography |
| Bavaria: word-internal signs for all genders unacceptable in official writing | Since 19 March 2024 |
| Baden-Württemberg schools (as of 27 June 2024) | Gendering left to teachers |
| Binding school implementation of the rule adjustment | School year 2027/2028 at the latest |
| Extended infinitive clauses | Separated from the main clause by a comma again |
The figures come from the Schwäbische Zeitung interview of 27 June 2024 and the News4teachers report of 1 August 2024. Rules and school practice can change, so check the source before you rely on them.
What this German language guide covers
Language questions rarely have a single answer. Some are settled by official rules, some by habit, and some by regional speech. This guide sorts them so you can see which is which.
The hub covers the written standard, the debate about gender in German, and the spoken varieties of the southwest. It reports what named institutions said and when they said it. It does not ask you to take a side.
This is an independent editorial and educational site about Baden-Württemberg. It has no official status and does not offer services, take enquiries or give advice on individual cases. Where a rule belongs to a school, an employer or an authority, that body’s own wording decides.
If you are new to the region, the baden-wuerttemberg guide gives the wider background. The southwest germany travel guide helps if you plan a trip and want to hear regional speech in person.
You do not need to read it in order. Jump to the section that matches your question, and follow the dated source links when a figure matters to a decision. Every section states who said what, so you can weigh it yourself.
The guide is organised around the questions readers most often bring:
- Who sets German spelling, and what changed in the official rules.
- What the spelling council decided about gender signs inside words.
- How schools, and Baden-Württemberg in particular, handle those signs.
- How dialects and forms of address fit around the written standard.
How are German spelling rules set?
Official spelling is not decided by a dictionary publisher. According to a News4teachers report of 14 July 2023, the Council for German Orthography works on behalf of state bodies. Its task is to keep spelling uniform across the German-speaking area and to develop it as the language changes.
A recommendation from the council becomes binding only when state bodies decide. In the Schwäbische Zeitung interview of 27 June 2024, council chairman Josef Lange said the council can adopt recommendations, and that decisions of the state bodies then bind schools and public administration.
That split explains many headlines. A council statement tells you what the experts recommend, while a state decision tells you what a school or authority must do. Our plain guide to german spelling rules walks through the written norm in everyday terms, and a separate profile explains how the council for german orthography works.
What changed in the official rules in 2024?
The News4teachers report of 1 August 2024 says an adjustment of the Official Rules had become official after the responsible state bodies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol agreed. The report lists these changes:
- The word list was updated with loanwords such as «timen», «mailen» and «whatsappen».
- The extended infinitive is again separated from the main clause by a comma, and this is binding.
- A new section deals with special characters inside words, as used by supporters of gender-sensitive language.
In his June 2024 interview, Lange gave a lighter example. Because nobody writes Spagetti, he said, official spelling would again read Spaghetti.
The same News4teachers report says binding implementation in schools is due at the latest by the school year 2027/2028, citing the council and the earlier approval of the Conference of Education Ministers. If you teach or study, ask your school which version of the rules it applies today.
What the Council decided about gender signs
Debate about gender signs inside words is where many readers first meet the spelling council. The signs in question are the asterisk, the colon and the underscore. The question is whether they belong to standard spelling, and the council’s answer has moved in small, dated steps.
- On 8 June 2018, a Tagesspiegel report said the council had not yet been able to agree on recommendations on gender-fair spelling.
- In 2021, according to News4teachers, the council recommended not adding such signs to the Official Rules at that time. It reasoned that gender-fair writing must not make learning written German harder.
- On 14 July 2023, the same report says, the council again did not class the signs as core orthography, but it noted them as special characters.
- By 1 August 2024, the News4teachers report says, the rules contained a section on special characters inside words.
After the 2023 decision, Lange said the development was not finished and had to be observed further, as the July 2023 report recounts. The council also said such signs could cause grammatical follow-on problems that are not yet resolved.
Readings from inside the field
Council member Henning Lobin, head of the Leibniz Institute for the German Language, gave an interview reported on 16 July 2023. He said the decision was unanimous and that gender signs should not simply be counted as a spelling error. In his view they could be marked as non-orthographic, but not graded as a mistake.
Lange took a stricter line in June 2024. He said that, as things stand, using such signs inside words cannot be justified linguistically. Both voices sit within the same council, which shows why you should name the speaker before you quote a view.
The council itself drew a line around its role. As reported on 1 August 2024, it stressed that school is the place where orthographic norms are taught, but that rules for school marking are not the council’s task.
The Duden view in 2025
A Stuttgarter Zeitung report of 3 August 2025 quotes Laura Neuhaus, head of the Duden editorial team. She said the Duden follows the council’s recommendation that the asterisk, colon and underscore are not core spelling, and that this applies in the public sphere, especially schools. In a private chat or on social media, she said, she can deviate.
Neuhaus also advised against reducing the topic to special characters. In the same report she named everyday words such as «Mitglied», «Leute», «Person» and «Leitung» as ways to be gender-neutral and gender-sensitive without signs.
Companion guides unpack the vocabulary around this debate. The guide to german grammatical gender separates the grammar category from the social question. The explainer on the generic masculine german looks at masculine forms for mixed groups, which the 2023 report says has been debated in Germany for years. The overview of gender-neutral german language collects wording alternatives like those the Duden editor names.
How German schools handle gender signs
Rules for pupils differ by state. The 1 August 2024 News4teachers report says the federal states handled special characters with gender reference very differently, and it summarises the German Philologists’ Association view:
- In Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse, marks can be deducted for such signs.
- In Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate, the signs are unwelcome but have no consequence in grading practice.
- The education ministry in Bremen favours allowing the colon inside words.
- Saxony had announced the day before that it would count the signs as errors.
Susanne Lin-Klitzing, the association’s federal chair, argued in the same report that it cannot be that some states follow the rules and some do not. She asked the education ministers’ conference for clarity. That is her organisation’s position, not a ruling.
Marked is not the same as graded
A pair of phrases decides much of the confusion. A sign that is marked is pointed out as not following the official rules. A sign that is graded as an error costs the pupil points.
Lange described Bavaria this way in the June 2024 interview. Since 19 March 2024, he said, word-internal signs for all genders are not permitted, and Bavarian authorities apply official spelling in official correspondence. In schools, such signs are marked as errors but not counted as errors.
Where does Baden-Württemberg stand?
A question put to Lange in the 27 June 2024 interview stated that Baden-Württemberg leaves gendering to teachers. The same question said Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein treat such signs as spelling errors. Lange answered that a process was still running and that a decision by education ministers was expected.
That is a snapshot from mid-2024, and the interview does not say what followed. Before you rely on it, look up the current guidance of the Baden-Württemberg education ministry or ask your school directly. Neither this site nor the sources here can give you a ruling on a particular marking decision.
If you are a pupil, parent or teacher, the practical route is short. Read the written guidance of your school, then the state ministry’s own text, and only then the news coverage. When these sources disagree, the school’s written guidance is what your marker will use, and a polite question to the teacher usually settles the rest.
If you write for an employer or an authority, the same logic applies. An internal style guide usually outranks a general debate, and the Duden editor’s remark about public versus private writing shows why context matters. A message to a friend and an official letter can follow different conventions without either being wrong.
Dialects and forms of address in the southwest
Standard written German is one layer of the language. In everyday speech, people in Baden-Württemberg also use regional ways of talking that the written norm never tried to capture. Spelling councils decide how the standard is written, not how neighbours greet one another.
Dialect questions come up most when readers ask about the region. The guide to the swabian dialect introduces Swabian as a way of speaking with its own habits. The companion guide to the alemannic dialect does the same for the Alemannic speech of the southwest.
Forms of address are a different kind of question again. Choosing between du and Sie is about register, meaning how close or formal you want to sound. The guide to german formal and informal you sets out how to choose in common situations.
A useful habit when you meet a regional word is to ask where it is used and in which setting. A phrase that sounds natural among friends may look odd in a formal letter, and the reverse is also true. Writing a dialect word down is a choice by the writer, not a spelling rule, so there is rarely a single correct form.
The same habit helps when you learn German as a second language. Textbook German, local speech and official forms can look like different languages at first. Treat the standard as your anchor and the regional forms as colour you will gradually recognise.
Taken together, these pieces show that “correct German” has several meanings. It can mean the official orthography, the grammar you learn in class, or the local speech at the bakery. Knowing which meaning is in play saves many arguments.
How to read language rules and news about them
Reports on language rules often mix expert views, state decisions and personal opinion. These steps help you separate them:
- Find out who is speaking: the council, a state ministry, a school, a publisher or a private person.
- Check the date, because positions on gender-fair writing have changed over time.
- Ask whether it is a recommendation or a binding decision.
- Separate public or school writing from private writing, as the Duden editor did in her August 2025 remarks.
- Open the original source and compare it with the summary you read.
A short glossary of terms from the sources also helps, because German reports use them without explanation:
- Amtliches Regelwerk is the Official Rules of German spelling, the text that schools and administrations follow once state bodies adopt changes.
- Wortbinnenzeichen are signs inside a word, such as the asterisk, colon or underscore, used to include all genders.
- Kernbestand is the core stock of orthography, and the council says word-internal signs are outside it.
- Sonderzeichen are special characters, a category the council now lists separately from ordinary punctuation.
- Binnen-I is the capital letter inside a word, which the Duden report names alongside the asterisk and the colon.
Language also changes without anyone issuing a rule. In the 3 August 2025 report, Neuhaus noted that people no longer speak the way Goethe and Schiller spoke with each other. She added that the Duden takes a relaxed, observing stance toward such change.
When a topic is heated, quote the exact words and the date, and let readers judge. This guide follows that habit: it reports what Lange, Lobin, Neuhaus and Lin-Klitzing said without adopting any position as its own.
Frequently asked questions
Who decides German spelling?
Show answer
The Council for German Orthography makes recommendations, and state bodies decide whether they bind schools and administration. Lange described this split in the 27 June 2024 interview.
Are gender signs part of official German spelling?
Show answer
As of the council’s decision of 14 July 2023, reported by News4teachers, they are not core orthography but are noted as special characters. A report of 1 August 2024 says the official rules now include a section on them.
Can a pupil lose marks for using gender signs?
Show answer
It depends on the state. The 1 August 2024 News4teachers report describes deductions as possible in Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse, and no grading consequence in Bavaria. Check your own school’s current rules.
Does this guide recommend for or against gender signs?
Show answer
No. It reports dated statements from the council, the Duden and others, and leaves the decision to you and to the rules of your school or employer.
What does the Duden say about gendering?
Show answer
In a report of 3 August 2025, Duden editor Laura Neuhaus said the Duden follows the council’s recommendation and that the rule applies to the public sphere, especially schools.
