There was a problem with this project: which spelling was to be used for the dictionary? There were three spelling systems in use at the time: the Willems spelling in Belgium, the Siegenbeek spelling in the Netherlands, and several variants of Bilderdijk's system. It would have been unacceptable to have used a mixture of these systems. In addition, the Siegenbeek system did not address certain issues such as when compounds were to be written as one word or the interpolation of letters in between. It was proposed to create a special dictionary spelling.