As an abstract system of symbols, language can be realized in its spoken and written form. The writing process, as the basis of written language development, represents one of the four language skills – listening, speaking, reading, and writing (European Commission, 2005). Standard Croatian language consists of 32 sounds which are noted down in gajica, a Latin script composed of 22 basic and 5 derived one-letter symbols (c, c, đ, s, ž) and three two-letter symbols (dž, lj, nj), arranged in the alphabetic sequence (Hrvatski skolski pravopis, 2005). Institutional L1 acquisition in the Republic of Croatia is composed of the following institutions: preschool – elementary school – high school. However, systematic learning and teaching begins when children start school (initial reading and writing period). The development of written language includes physical activity (motor and visual) and psycho-cognitive activity (acquiring the grapheme standard, learning the rules of orthography, mastering the grammatical and lexical structure of that language). According to the graphomotor criterion, first grade pupils are expected to master all four types of Croatian grapheme system (lower and upper case block letters, and lower and upper case cursive letters); in accordance with the orthographic criterion, pupils need to master the basic orthographic principles and rules as outlined in the Croatian language curriculum (HNOS, 2005); according to the creativity criterion, pupils are expected to form and write words, structure simple sentences and create short texts. Initial writing has been emphasised as an important educational achievement in the process of functional learning and tuition in Europe as well (Bildungsplan fur die Grundschule, 1994). Unfortunately, there is a great discrepancy between theory and practice in the Croatian educational system. There are some ten primers with different approaches to teaching literacy. This fact points to the lack of standardisation in the initial process of writing and also makes one wonder about the appropriateness of teaching in the initial writing process (Bežen, 2005). All that has been mentioned points to the necessity of research in the field of initial reading and writing. The authors of this paper present the results of a research carried out in first grades of primary schools (big town, suburb, small town, and village) in the Republic of Croatia, in 2007. The aim was to establish the level of proficiency in writing as the basis of the acquisition of orthographic competence in the early language discourse. On the sample N = 301 the usage of block and cursive letters has been investigated as well as the level of acquisition of writing, formation and writing of letters, sentences and text, and testing of the knowledge of orthographic norms. The data collected were analysed by means of the SPSS statistics software. The instruments were t-test and variance analysis which were used to establish the existence of a statistically relevant difference in the examined contents, in accordance with the results at the tests of linguistic and communicative competences (Pavlicevic-Franic, 2005).