Spelling System

The Indonesian Spelling System General Manual is called PUEBI, short for Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia. It was initially called The Enhanced Spelling System (Indonesian: Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan, abbreviated EYD), also called the Perfected Spelling System, and later called the Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System (Indonesian: Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia Yang Disempurnakan) until 2015.

Everyone who wants to know how to write Indonesian properly must know these basic rules. If you are a non native speaker, don’t worry, many Indonesians still struggle to write in Indonesian properly too.

The Indonesian Spelling System General Manual cover the following topics:

1. Pemakaian Huruf, The Use of Letters: how to read and write the alphabets, 
2. Pemakaian Tanda Baca, The Use of Punctuations: how to use punctuations in sentences.
3. Penulisan Kata, The Use of Words. This is a long chapter as it explains comprehensively on understanding the root word, rules on different prefixes, reduplications, how combined words can give you different meanings, how to cut word based on syllables, prepositions, understanding the use of different particles, abbreviations and acronyms, how to write numbers in sentences, many type of pronouns and the use of specific articles.
4. Penulisan Unsur Serapan, Loan Words Absorption. How loan words are absorbed into Indonesian language. The Indonesian language has absorbed many loanwords from other languages, Sanskrit,  Chinese,  Japanese,  Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, English, regional languages and other Austronesian languages.

List of Content

• Use of Letters
  1. The alphabet
  2. Vowel
  3. Consonants
  4. Diphthong
  5. Combined consonants
  6. Capital letters
  7. Italic
  8. Bold letters

• Writing Rules
  1. Basic/root words
  2. Words with affixes
  3. Reduplications
  4. Compound words
  5. How to split words
  6. Prepositions
  7. Particles
  8. Abbreviations and acronyms
  9. Numbers and figures
  10. Pronouns
  11. Articles: Si and Sang

• Use of Punctuations
  • Period (.)
  • Commas (,)
  • Semicolon (;)
  • Colon (:)
  • Hyphen (–)
  • Dash (–)
  • Question mark (?)
  • Exclamation mark (!)
  • Ellipsis (…)
  • Quotation mark (“…“)
  • Single quotation mark (‘…‘)
  • Parentheses, round brackets or brackets ((…))
  • Square brackets ([…])
  • Forward slash  (/)
  • Apostrophe (‘)

• Loan Words Absorption

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Resource: Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia yang Disempurnakan (PUEBI). Permendikbud 50/2015. The General Guidelines for Indonesian Spelling. Translated by Bahasa Kita.