Jezični savjetnik - iz prakse za praksu

The book is designed as "practice for practice" – not dry grammar, but solving real problems faced by journalists, editors, professors, students, bloggers, copywriters and anyone who writes or speaks publicly.

The structure is thematic, with short chapters and many examples from real life (newspaper headlines, TV shows, advertisements, social networks, official documents):

• The most common mistakes in the Croatian language – spelling (upper/lower case, joined/separated writing, hyphen), punctuation (comma, colon, dash), declension and conjugation (e.g. "in Zagreb" vs. "in Zagreb", "he said he would come" vs. incorrectly "he would come").
• Style and expressiveness – unnecessary foreign words, pleonasms ("his own"), anglicisms ("meetup" instead of "meeting"), politically correct expressions, gender equality in the language.
• Current dilemmas – spelling reform 2013, new spelling manuals, use of "and/or", "the/or", "as/what", "because/why", Croatian vs. Serbian variants in the region.
• Media language – how to write headlines, subtitles, leads; avoiding sensationalism, proper citation of sources, language in radio and TV shows.
• Practical advice – short tests, "before-after" examples, explanations of why something is wrong and how to fix it simply.

The book is written in a lively, witty style – Maja Matković does not condemn, but explains, often with a touch of humor and irony towards the linguistic "horrors" in the media. Each chapter ends with concise rules and examples for quick application.