This paper claims that a clear realization of the general principles of codification of punctuation should precede the work on creating a complete set of rules for Russian punctuation. Disputes among linguists on the qualification of new phenomena in punctuation are clear evidence of the absence of generally accepted criteria for assessing codification of norms. The proposed integrated approach to the codification of punctuation norms combines the results of observation over usage (taking into account the social variation of usage) with results of interviews.
It is necessary to distinguish between analytical and synthetic approaches. Within the analytical approach, a given punctuation mark serves the starting point for further investigation: the researchers seek to provide most accurate account of its functions. Within the synthetic approach, a given syntactic position is the starting point: one should establish whether it requires a punctuation mark and, if so, which one. Rules of punctuation require the synthetic approach while theoretical grounds for them may be better discovered within the analytical approach.
The codification consists of two stages, namely, (i) deciding whether a punctuation mark is appropriate in a given syntactic position, and (ii) stating the corresponding rule. Often the codifiers do not distinguish between those two stages. The Commission for Orthography of the Russian Academy of Sciences analyzes discrepancies between rules for punctuation and usage. In addition, the Commission studies variation of punctuation standards as well as some specific issues of punctuation. These issues will be reflected in a new punctuation code.

The article briefly reviews the history of the intonation principle in Russian punctuation. It is shown that, despite its spontaneous partial consideration in the early period of the formation of Russian punctuation, its theoretical justification and inclusion in the list of punctuation principles occurred only in the 20th century. The actual status of this principle in the current punctuation rules is characterized as paradoxical, since the declaration of reliance on the intonation principle is not supported by its real consideration in the wording of the rules. Using an example of a group of rules governing the setting of the m-dash in a binominative sentence, it is shown that relying on the intonational marking of communicative components in a sentence can considerably simplify and reduce the formulation of rules.

The paper examines punctuation features of the word dejstvitel’no. It is suggested that tendencies in using punctuation marks to single it out in texts correlate with the context determined by functional polysemy of discourse words.

The history of punctuation marks in a certain sense reflects the history of the Russian literary text as a structurally organized unity for the expression of the author’s intention. It is considered that in the 19th-century Russian punctuation attracted much less attention than disordered spelling. Therefore, it seems important to analyze the structural and semantic significance of such a punctuation mark as dash in the 19th-century Russian text, which ensures the implementation of logical, semantic, emphasis-emphasizing, emotionally expressive functions. The conclusions presented in the article are based on observations of the use of the aforementioned punctuation mark in deep connection with meaning and stylistics in texts of a specific genre.

The paper discusses Russian punctuation marks and their use in official handwritten documents at one of the initial stages of the formation of Russian punctuation system. The research material for the paper is the body of archival documents of the 18th century and it consists of 381 documents of 82 genres.

The article describes quantitative and qualitative deviations in the use of punctuation marks occurring in written official communication. The described deviations occur mainly under the influence of pragmatic factors and are aimed at the addressee of the documentary text.

The article deals with the syntactic organization and punctuation in advertising texts at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The research material were advertising texts and advertisements placed in regional press (“Ural life”, “Irbit fair leaf”, etc.). During the period under review, print advertising is at the stage of formation and has not yet emerged as an independent genre. Modern advertising texts are primarily focused on attracting attention. They should be readable by a potential buyer without any difficulty, therefore, their syntax, punctuation, font and illustrative design should contribute to ease of perception and understanding of the text. In the considered material, the opposite situation is observed. With regard to its genre, advertising at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is close to announcements and aims to convey important information. The desire of the seller/manufacturer to tell as much as possible about their product to the buyer results in complexity of the text. Organization of advertising text at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries involves an active use of abbreviations, complex syntactic constructions as well as unusual design elements (for example, a line break). Syntactic organization of the text at the given period can become an indicator of a gradual transition from the announcement genre to the ad genre: the texts most rich in information, still drifting towards the announcement genre, have complex punctuation and syntactic organization, while texts focused on the emotional response of the reader (a new stage in the development of the ad genre), on the contrary, are distinguished by considerable simplifications.

The purpose of this study is to identify new functions and determine trends in the use of punctuation marks in advertising texts, and to reveal the essence of the “play with punctuation marks” as a new kind of language play in the framework of linguistic theory. The research material were examples of outdoor advertising on Moscow streets and in well-known printing buildings, collected by the author.
The result of the study is to generalize and systematize the use of punctuation marks, identify and explain cases of replacing one character with another, justify the functions of punctuation marks in printed advertising texts and to describing a new kind of language play called “punctuation play”.

This article analyses the communication aspect of punctuation marks in advertising texts. External advertising of the Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan of the Russian Federation is used as material for this work. The study implemented such methods of linguistic analysis as the sampling method used to collect the material, and the method of linguistic observation. The analysis highlighted main punctuation techniques used by advertisers to construct advertising messages as a dialogue with the target audience – parcelling, interrogative sentences, exclamatory sentences, and sentences with punctuation marks such as dash and ellipsis.

Russian punctuation is one of the organizing means of artistic communication. In each individual work of art, one can speak of a system of punctuation marks (or their absence) that define its general idea. The dialogue of artistic discourse is created both by traditional and individually-authored division of the artistic space – this predetermines the invariance of meaning in the process of its actualization when generating and during speech subjects’ perception of statements in the process of communication.

In fiction, utterances in a dialogue are punctuated with punctuation marks, including the marks of the spatial and compositional organization of the text. Marks that are usually used at the end of a sentence can also be found in the middle of an utterance in a dialogue. Punctuation marks used in a highly stylized way are associated with the semantic division of an utterance on the horizontal level of development. An utterance can be represented with one of the end of sentence punctuation marks. The emergence of meaning is formed in the reader’s mind on the vertical level of development.

The paper considers the use of quotation marks, brackets, and hard hyphen as the paragraphic means which control comprehension of a reader of science and technology sources. In addition, the article determines and describes accentuating function of the punctuation marks.

The article analyses the notions “text punctuation” and “metagraphemics”. Texts by B. Akhmadulina, A. Voznesensky, Y. Yevtushenko, R. Rozhdestvensky were used as a basis for description of the text functions of punctuation marks and broader metagraphemic marks in the legacy of the poets of the 1960s. The analysis was carried out on the cognitive, discursive, communicative and pragmatic aspects. It is shown that the metagraphemic marks highlight those fragments in the text that bring forward or form the background knowledge which determines the direction of the reader’s associative reaction to the text content. Besides the punctuation marks provide the non-linear reading of the poetical text and arrange the transition from text categories to discourse categories.

The text of the drama “Janko krUl’ albAnskaj” by Ilia Zdanevich is the embodiment of the ideas of Russian futurism on the creation of a new poetic language, and reflects discussions on spelling reform relevant to the beginning of the 20th century. Punctuation in the text of avant-garde works plays a special role. By minimal means, using small number of punctuation marks in principle, the author achieves structural division of the text, which contributes to the understanding of its basic constructions – in particular, residual emotions.

In the typing system on the computer one can use a dot instead of a comma inside a sentence. It is argued that such a dot followed by a small letter to the right will operate as a comma. This system of computer writing appears to be the most ergonomic.

The article deals with punctuation in modern business communication. The authors compare the traditional setting of punctuation marks with the one used in chats, social networks, e-mails, etc. With the transition of business correspondence to chats and messengers, punctuation ceases to obey the general language norm, and develops according to the laws of the Internet: traditional punctuation is replaced by emoticons or rethought emotionally. The authors analyze in detail the functions of the exclamation mark, which serves to distinguish sentences and to express a subjective attitude. Considering the use of the exclamation mark in correspondence, the authors note its frequency in online texts. The exclamation makes the statement relevant to the recipient, and the exclamation mark becomes a conative (addressed to the recipient) component of business communication. Particular attention is paid to another conative sign, the ellipsis as omission/suspension points. The use of punctuation marks today depends on the transition of traditionally verbal forms of communication to writing, on following in business communication not a language norm, but a corporate substandard, on digital writing technology and the actions of the writer.

This article aims to give an overview of similarities and differences in the function and use of smileys and emojis on the one hand and punctuation marks on the other hand in digital communication. It becomes clear that the traditional punctuation marks in their current use and the relatively new graphic symbols used in chats, messengers and forums are not so different at all, but show certain similarities, in that they can supplement, modify or even completely replace the written message itself.

The article discusses the emotionally expressive function of punctuation marks placed at the end of a sentence. Marks of the end of a sentence (dot, question and exclamation marks, ellipsis as well as their possible combinations) are involved in the transmission of not only meaning (logical), but also emotional information. In the design of emotionally colored sentences of different functional types, one way or another, all the marks of the end of the sentence are involved, except for the dot. Each sign participating in the expression of emotional meanings is assigned the type of emotional content that is formed with its help.

The paper deals with punctuation features in sentences with the connective to est’. The data of the Russian National Corpus shows an increase in the frequency of using the connective at the beginning of an independent sentence, after a period. The paper discusses the differences between to est’ in the middle and at the beginning of sentences: the ability to express certain relationships between text fragments, syntactic conditions of the use, the conditions under which the fragment introduced by to est’ cannot be formed as part of the preceding sentence and follow after a comma.

The paper deals with some features of the event structure that influence its formal expression and determine the wider context of a clause. The notion of relative/absolute boundedness is used to indicate the exhaustiveness of the event. The relative boundedness is a feature that makes it possible to use the genitive partitive case as the direct object. Within such perfective verbs as vypit’ ‘drink.PF’ and sjest’ ‘eat.PF’, the nominal case determines the interpretation of a verbal phrase: the accusative indicates the absolute boundedness while use of the genitive results in the relative boundedness. As for degree achievements, delimitative Aktionsart and semelfactive Aktionsart, it is the verb that determines the interpretation of a verbal phrase. What all the examined cases have in common is that the use of the genitive as the direct object marker indicates the relative boundedness (partial resultativeness): the object of the event is a part of the cumulative object of a wider (actual or ideal) situation.

This article attempts to examine the repetition of verbal synonyms in written texts at the interface of punctuation, syntax, and orthography in Russian. Synonymous verbs in this article are understood extensively, with reference being made to contextually synonymous verbs as well. All the examined examples represent repetitions of synonymous verbs, which are used as homogeneous parts of the sentence and mediated by punctuational (commas and parentheses), syntactic (conjunctions i ‘and’ and ili ‘or’), and orthographic (slash and hyphen) means. The syntactic property of repetition causes mutual replaceability of those components and synonymise verbs whose semantics may differ by their strict lexical definitions. While the most common means to connect synonymous verbs is a comma, conjunctions seem to structure repetition in the best manner. Orthographic means, especially a hyphen, show their functional extension in relation to synonymous verbs, which have not been canonical in Russian orthography and punctuation guidebooks. Repetition of synonyms is one of the characteristics of spoken language. However, it can also be widely observed in written texts. Although repetition of synonyms may not be a desirable phenomenon owing to its semantic redundancy, it helps the speaker/writer to modify, gradate, and formulate his/her utterances. While it is a communicative strategy for the speaker/writer, it may represent a communicative challenge to the listener/reader, who is expected to grasp the meaning of the repeated synonyms.

The paper deals with the predicative attribute (co-predicative) in Russian, its features, and its interrelations with Russian punctuation rules as well as with intonation. It is shown that the word order, the semantics of the attribute and of the corresponding verb are crucial for grammatical interpretation of attributive constructions. It is in many cases important what kind of feature the adjective designates – a permanent or a temporary one. The relation between the appearance of predicative attribute and the separation by punctuation in the written text and through intonation in the oral one all obey controversial rules revealed in the paper. Thus, grammatical division, punctuation and intonation nuances cannot be in oneto-one relation to each other. Intonation and sense shades as well as connections inside the text cannot be rendered by punctuation rules, even by complicated ones.

In modern media speech, the problem of understanding the emotional and expressive semantics in the content side of the media language is acutely topical. Parcelling in media in the stylistic refraction is a publicistic speech “with violation of syntactic integrity and sentence connections, strongly intoned and as if broken into pieces” (G.N. Akimova). The journalistic style, which is the most conducive to the wide use of various means of expression, in the case of parcelled constructions receives an additional “linear intonation structure” (E.V. Paducheva), which overall increases the expressiveness of the reportage genre. Journalistic text differs from the strict classical framework of punctuation and is the most suitable environment for the full implementation of communicative effectiveness. In addition to the two main functions (emotionally emissive and compositional), parcelling performs the following functions: dynamic, pictorial, characterological, informational compression, evaluative, game, subtext, organization of new theme and rheme, logical and cognitive, semantic, explanatory (clarifying), summative, generalizing. In the social reports, there is the use of one dot or dots, question and exclamation marks or emphatic dash for parceling and hyphen for syllabic parcelling. The parcelled dissection of media text is always the result of the author’s conscious processing and has an “associative intermittent effect” on the recipient (S.G. Ilienko), creating a kind of syntactic seam that preserves the coherent unity of the text and allows the journalist to update significant fragments of the material.

The present article concentrates on different types of Russian and Polish parcelled constructions.
Parcelling is one of the expressive syntactic means and is defined as the division of the sentence structure into several intonation-separated parts. A parcelled construction consists of the basic (main) part, which is a structurally, syntactically and semantically independent sentence, and the partcellator – syntactically and semantically dependent on the main part. Parcelling occurs on the level of a simple sentence as well as on the level of a compound sentence. This phenomenon is used in order to select the most important information and to attract the addressee’s attention.

The article shows the role of quotation marks as a means of actualizing new vocabulary and marking semantic processes and stylistic characteristics of words in the works of Siberian publicists. The material of the essays can serve as an empirical base for the 19th-century differential dictionary and the Great Academic Dictionary of Russian language.

The article discusses the semantic conditions for quotation mark when using the word combination «Cold War» in Russian-language journalistic and literary texts from the 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century. Various options for the graphic expression of the stable word combination «Cold War» are analyzed from the point of view of the semantics and pragmatics of the text.

The paper offers a sketch of a typological classification of diacritics, according to their role in the graphic system and their position in writing. The diacritics of the Russian writing are under consideration. The research focuses on the letter ё, highlighting traditions and practices of its use. The survey reveals current trends in the use of ё, based on attitudes of young people to it, and factors that influence the choice of ё when writing in different styles (formal/non-formal) and techniques: handwritten or printed (on the computer/other device). Ideological potential of the letter ё is noted, too.