Punctuation and supragraphemics in pre-printed Russian scientific texts

The paper presents a complex study of all punctuation and typographic resources that are widely used in modern Russian scientific prose.Common punctuation marks, consistent with linear and two-dimensional supragraphemics, perform general separating, emphasizing andlinking functions in accordance with their conventional semantics; variation of these tools contributes to the efficiency of scientific textinterpretation. The use of supragraphemics (capitalization, spacing, variation of fonts, size-type, and two-dimensional changes), beingdifferent in quality compared to conventional punctuation, is not strictly specified by the rules. They reveal their dual nature focusing onwords and word groups essential to the text contents and being optional but consistent within a certain scientific journal edition. A widerange of functions of supragraphemic resources in modern scientific texts is specified by a great variety of standards offered by differentpublishing houses. The punctuation of pre-printed scientific texts reflects the way it functions from the point of view of Russian speakers.The linguistic knowledge and punctuation skills are acquired based on the experience received in the process of reading and composingscientific texts. This punctuation corresponds to but does not coincide with the punctuation fixed in the rules of Russian punctuation andtypographic guides. Graphic representation of some conventional stops (dash, quotes) varies from that required in Russian scientific prose.Conventional punctuation marks that separate units (period, comma, dash) and linear supragraphemic resources (capitalization, italics andunderlining) prove to possess a wider functional potential in pre-printed texts. Some are used for giving additional emphasis to the wordsthat seem important to the author but not essential enough to the syntactic, semantic and formal structure of a scientific text. The use ofconventional punctuation and supragraphemics of pre-printed Russian scientific texts that does not conform to the standards given in therules appears to correspond to a number of English scientific style punctuation rules. Such correspondence can be explained by mixing ofideas on punctuation functions in scientific prose of different languages, and thereby this research may contribute to the scientific study ofmodern punctuation status as a phenomenon that is not strictly specified by the rules of a certain language and exists for inter-languagegeneral usage. Studying conventional stops and supragraphemics as parts of a whole system allows giving a complex description of modernpunctuation with its multilayer structure and linguistic value in written scientific communication.

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