Early orthographical struggles of the Lithuanian daily newspaper Draugas

The objective of this article is to examine the orthographical practices that were followed in the first issues of Draugas (July 1909 – December 1909), as well as to explain orthographical struggles with the Lithuanian alphabet that occurred because of the lack of some Lithuanian letters (, , , and ) at the newspaper’s Slovak printing house, Bratstvo. An analysis revealed that in those early issues, three orthographical models were followed in the newspaper. The editors of Draugas were aware of the orthographical shortcomings and tried to use other diacritical letters in place of the missing ones. However, in practice, the printers did not always follow the editors’ instructions. Therefore, the orthography of the newspaper was much more diverse than the editors expecte