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Russian orthography (Russian:правописа́ние,romanized:pravopisaniye,IPA:[prəvəpʲɪˈsanʲɪjə]) is anorthographic tradition formally considered to encompassspelling (Russian:орфогра́фия,romanized:orfografiya,IPA:[ɐrfɐˈɡrafʲɪjə]) andpunctuation (Russian:пунктуа́ция,romanized:punktuatsiya,IPA:[pʊnktʊˈat͡sɨjə]). Russian spelling, which is mostly phonemic in practice, is a mix ofmorphological andphonetic principles, with a fewetymological orhistoric forms, and occasionalgrammatical differentiation. The punctuation, originally based onByzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the models ofFrench andGerman orthography.

TheIPA transcription attempts to reflectvowel reduction when not understress. The sounds that are presented are those of the standard language; other dialects may have noticeably different pronunciations for the vowels.

Russian is written with a modernvariant of theCyrillic script. Russian spelling typically avoids arbitrarydigraphs. Except for the use ofhard andsoft signs, which have no phonetic value in isolation but can follow a consonant letter, nophoneme is ever represented with more than one letter.

Under the morphological principle, themorphemes (roots, suffixes, infixes, and inflexional endings) are attached without modification; the compounds may be further agglutinated. For example, the long adjective шарикоподшипниковый, sharikopodshipnikoviy[ʂa.rʲɪ.kə.pɐtˈʂɨ.pnʲɪ.kə.vɨj] ('pertaining to ball bearings'), may be decomposed as follows (words having independent existencein boldface):

Note again that each component in the final production retains its basic form, despite the vowel reduction.

The phonetic assimilation of consonant clusters also does not usually violate the morphological principle of the spelling. For example, the decomposition of счастье[ˈɕːa.sʲtʲjɪ] ('happiness, good fortune') is as follows:

Note the assimilation with⟨сч⟩- so that it represents the same sound (or cluster) as⟨щ⟩-. The spelling <щастие> was fairly common among the literati in the eighteenth century, but is usually frowned upon today.

The phonetic principle implies that:

• all morphemes are written as they are pronounced in isolation,without vowel reduction,Church Slavonic style, or, more strictly, taking inflexion into account (this in combination with the morphological agglutination described above is sometimes called the morphemic principle);
• certain prefixes that end in a voiced consonant (in practice, only those in -⟨з⟩/z/) have that consonant devoiced (become[s]) to voicing assimilation. This may be reflected orthographically. For example, for the prefix/prepositionбез[bʲez] 'without':

• certain roots and prefixes occasionally have their vowel modified in individual cases to reflect historical changes in pronunciation, usually as a result of being unstressed or, conversely, stressed. In practice, this usually applies to -⟨o⟩-/o/ changing to -⟨a⟩-[ɐ] or[ə] (akanye), and alternations between the allophonic vowels[ɨ] and[i] (represented by⟨ы⟩ and⟨и⟩ respectively):

• borrowed words and foreign names are usually spelled asorthographic transcriptions, or, more precisely, mixed transcriptions-transliterations based mainly on original pronunciation (Jacques-Yves Cousteau is rendered in Russian as Жак-Ив Кусто; the English name Paul is rendered as Пол, the French name Paul as Поль, the German name Paul as Пауль) but also on original spelling (the German surnames Schmied, Schmidt, Schmitt are rendered in Russian as Шмид, Шмидт, Шмитт). In particular, double consonants are usually retained from original spelling when their pronunciation is not normally geminated. In addition, unpalatalized consonants are usually followed by⟨е⟩ rather than⟨э⟩ (e.g. кафе[kɐˈfɛ],'café'); 19th-century linguists, such asYakov Karlovich Grot, considered unpalatalized pronunciation of consonants before/e/ to be foreign to Russian, though this has now become the standard for many loanwords.

Pronunciation may also deviate from normal phonological rules. For example, unstressed/o/ (spelled⟨о⟩) is usually pronounced[ɐ] or[ə], but радио ('radio') is pronounced[ˈra.dʲɪ.o], with an unstressed final[o].

The fact that Russian has retained much of its ancient phonology has made the historical or etymological principle (dominant in languages like English, French, and Irish) less relevant. Because the spelling has been adjusted to reflect the changes in the pronunciation of theyers and to eliminate letters with identical pronunciation, the only systematic examples occur in some foreign words and in some of the inflectional endings, both nominal and verbal, which are not always written as they are pronounced. For example:

Thegrammatical principle has become stronger in contemporary Russian. It specifies conventional orthographic forms to mark grammatic distinctions (gender, participle vs. adjective, and so on). Some of these rules are ancient, and could perhaps be considered etymological; some are based in part on subtle, and not necessarily universal, distinctions in pronunciation; and some are practically arbitrary. Some characteristic examples follow.

For nouns ending in a sibilant -⟨ж⟩/ʐ/, -⟨ш⟩/ʂ/, -⟨щ⟩/ɕː/, -⟨ч⟩/t͡ɕ/, asoft sign⟨ь⟩ is appended in the nominative singular if the gender is feminine, and is not appended if masculine:

Neither of the aforementioned consonants has phonemically distinctpalatalized and unpalatalized variants. Hence, the use of⟨ь⟩ in these examples is not to indicate a different pronunciation, but to help distinguish different grammatical genders. A common noun ending in a consonant without -⟨ь⟩ is masculine while a noun ending in -⟨ь⟩ is often feminine (though there are some masculine nouns ending in a "soft" consonant, with the -⟨ь⟩ marking a different pronunciation).

Though based on common ancient etymology, by which a hard signъ was appended to masculine nouns before 1918, both symbols having once been pronounced as ultra-short ("reduced") vowels (calledyers in Slavic studies), the modern rule is nevertheless grammatical, because its application has been made more nearly universal.

The past passive participle has a doubled -⟨нн⟩-/nn/, while the same word used as an adjective has a single -⟨н⟩-/n/:

This rule is partly guided by pronunciation, but the geminated pronunciation is not universal. The rule is therefore considered one of the difficult points of Russian spelling, since the distinction between adjective (implying state) and participle (implying action) is not always clear. A proposal in the late 1990s to simplify this rule by basing the distinction on whether or not the verb is transitive has not been formally adopted.

Prepositional phrases in which the literal meaning is preserved are written with the words separated; when used adverbially, especially if the meaning has shifted, they are usually written as a single word:

(This is extracted from a whole set of extremely detailed rules about run-together, hyphenated, or separated components. Such rules are essentially arbitrary. There are enough sub-cases, exceptions, undecidable points, and inconsistencies that even well-educated native speakers sometimes have to check in a dictionary. Arguments about this issue have been continuous for 150 years.)

Thefull stop (period) (.),colon (:),semicolon (;),comma (,),question mark (?),exclamation mark (!), andellipsis (…) are equivalent in shape to the basic symbols of punctuation (знаки препинания[ˈznakʲɪprʲɪpʲɪˈnanʲɪjə]) used for the commonEuropean languages, and follow the same general principles of usage.

The colon is used exclusively as a means of introduction, and never, as in slightly archaic English, to mark a periodic pause intermediate in strength between the semicolon and the full stop (period) (cf. H.W. Fowler,The Kingˈs English, 1908).

The comma is used very liberally to mark the end of introductory phases, on either side of simpleappositions, and to introduce allsubordinate clauses. The Englishdistinction between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses does not exist:

Thehyphen (-), andem dash (—) are used to mark increasing levels of separation. The hyphen is put between components of a word, and the em-dash to separate words in a sentence, in particular to mark longer appositions or qualifications that in English would typically be put in parentheses, and as a replacement for acopula:

In short sentences describing a noun (but generally not a pronoun unless special poetic emphasis is desired) in present tense (as a substitution for amodal verb "быть/есть" (to be)):

Quotes are not used to mark paragraphed direct quotation, which is instead separated out by the em-dash (—):

Inlined direct speech and other quotation is marked at the first level byguillemets «», and by lowered and raised reversed double quotes („“) at the second:

UnlikeAmerican English, the period or other terminal punctuation is placedoutside the quotation. As the example above demonstrates, the quotes are often used to mark the names of entities introduced with the generic word.

These are introduced with the international symbol ofparentheses (). However, their use is typically restricted to pureasides, rather than, as in English, to markapposition.

As in many languages, the spelling was formerly quite more phonemic and less consistent. However, the influence of the major grammarians, fromMeletius Smotrytsky (1620s) toLomonosov (1750s) toGrot (1880s), ensured a more careful application of morphology and etymology.

Today, the balance between the morphological and phonetic principles is well established. The etymological inflexions are maintained by tradition and habit, although their non-phonetic spelling has occasionally prompted controversial calls for reform (as in the periods 1900–1910, 1960–1964). A primary area where the spelling is utterly inconsistent and therefore controversial is:

• the complexity (or even correctness) of some of the grammatical principles, especially with respect to the strung-together, hyphenated, or disjoint writing of the constituent morphemes.

These two points have been the topic of scientific debate since at least the middle of the nineteenth century.

In the past, uncertainty abounded about which of the ordinary or iotated/palatalizingseries of vowels to allow after the sibilant consonants⟨ж⟩[ʐ],⟨ш⟩[ʂ],⟨щ⟩[ɕ:],⟨ц⟩[ts],⟨ч⟩[tɕ], which, as mentionedabove, are not standard in theirhard/soft pairs. This problem, however, appears to have been resolved by applying the phonetic and grammatical principles (and to a lesser extent, the etymological) to define a complicated though internally consistent set ofspelling rules.

In 2000–2001, a minor revision of the 1956 codification was proposed. It met with public protest and has not been formally adopted.

Russian orthography was simplified by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, conflating the letterѣ (Yat) withе,ѳ withф, andі andѵ withи. Additionally, the archaic muteyer became obsolete, including theъ (the "hard sign") in final position following consonants (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonicopen-syllable system). For instance,Рыбинскъ becameРыбинск ("Rybinsk").

Examples:

• Сѣверо-Американскіе Соединенные Штаты toСеверо-Американские Соединённые Штаты – The United States of America (lit. ' North American United States', popular pre-revolutionary name of the United States in Russia)
• Россія toРоссия
• Петроградъ toПетроград (Petrograd)
• раіонъ toрайон (region/district)
• мараѳонъ toмарафон (marathon)
• дѣти toдети (children)
• Іисусъ Христосъ toИисус Христос (Jesus Christ)

In December 1917, thePeople's Commissariat of Education, headed byA. V. Lunacharsky, issued a decree stating, "All state and government institutions and schools without exception should carry out the transition to the new orthography without delay. From 1 January 1918, all government and state publications, both periodical and non-periodical were to be printed in the new style."^[1][2] The decree was nearly identical to the proposals put forth by the May Assembly, and with other minor modifications formed the substance of the decree issued by theSoviet of People's Commissars in October 1918.^[1][2]

Although occasionally praised by the Russianworking class, the reform was unpopular amongst the educated people, religious leaders and many prominent writers, many of whom were oppositional to thenew state.^[3] Furthermore, even the workers ridiculed the spelling reform at first, arguing it made the Russian language poorer and less elegant.^[4]

In this way, private publications could formally be printed using the old (or more generally, any convenient) orthography. The decree forbade the retraining of people previously trained under the old norm. A given spelling was considered a misspelling only if it violated both the old and the new norms.

However, in practice, the Soviet government rapidly set up amonopoly on print production and kept a very close eye on the fulfillment of the edict. A common practice was the forced removal of not just the lettersІ,Ѳ, andѢ from printing offices, but alsoЪ. Because of this, the usage of theapostrophe as a dividing sign became widespread in place ofъ (e.g.,под’ём,ад’ютант instead ofподъём,адъютант), and came to be perceived as a part of the reform (even if, from the point of view of the letter of the decree of theCouncil of People's Commissars, such uses were mistakes). People resisting the implementation of the new orthography were deemedenemies of the people and executed.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, some academic printings (connected with the publication of old works, documents or printings whose typesettings predated the revolution) came out in the old orthography (excepttitle pages and, often,prefaces) up until 1929.^[5]

The reform reduced the number of orthographic rules having no support in pronunciation—for example, the need to learn a long list of words which were written with yats (the composition of said list was controversial among linguists, and different spelling guides contradicted one another).

The reform resulted in some economy in writing andtypesetting, due to the exclusion ofЪ at the end of words—by the reckoning ofLev Uspensky, text in the new orthography was shorter by one-thirtieth.^[6]

The reform removed pairs of completelyhomophonousgraphemes from the Russian alphabet (i.e.,Ѣ andЕ;Ѳ andФ; and the trio ofИ,І andѴ), bringing the alphabet closer tothe Russian language's actual phonological system.^[7]

According to critics, the choice ofИи as the only letter to represent that side and the removal ofІі defeated the purpose of 'simplifying’ the language, asИи occupies more space and, furthermore, is sometimes indistinguishable fromШш.^[5]

The reform also created manyhomographs andhomonyms, which used to be spelled differently. Examples: есть/ѣсть (to be/eat) and миръ/міръ (peace/the World) becameесть andмир in both instances.

In a complex system of cases, -аго was replaced with -его (лучшаго → лучшего), in other instances -аго was replaced with -ого, -яго with -его (e.g., новаго → нового, ранняго → раннего), feminine cases moved from -ыя, -ія — to -ые, -ие (новыя (книги, изданія) → новые);Feminine pronouns онѣ, однѣ, однѣхъ, однѣмъ, однѣми were replaced with они, одни, одних, одним, одними; ея (нея) was replaced with на её (неё).^[8]

The latter was especially controversial, as these feminine pronouns had been deep-rooted in the language and extensively used by writers and poets.^[9]

Prefixes ending with-з/с underwent a change: now all of them (exceptс-) end with-с before voiceless consonants and with-з before voiced consonants or vowels (разбить, разораться, butрасступиться). Previously, the prefixes showed concurrence between phonetic (as now) and morphological (alwaysз) spellings; at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the standard rule was:с-,без-,ч(е)рез- were always written in this way; other prefixes ended withс before voiceless consonants exceptс and withз otherwise (разбить, разораться, разступиться, butраспасться). Earlier 19th-century works also sometimes usedз beforeц, ч, ш, щ.

• Russian language
• Russian alphabet
• Cyrillic script
• Cyrillic alphabets
• Rules of Russian Orthography and Punctuation
• Yoficator

• GRAMOTA.ru A reference and tutorial site on Russian literacy sponsored by the Russian government
• The full text of the 1956 Russian orthographic codification
• J.K. Grot,Russkoe Pravopisanie (standard guide to the pre-reform rules), 1894 (DJVU file, pre-1918 orthography)
• The Comprehensive Dictionary of the Contemporary Russian Language. The largest Russian dictionary with orthography
• 1956 Russian orthographic codification
• Criticism of the 1918 reform(in Russian)
• CyrAcademisator Bi-directional online transliteration for ALA-LC (diacritics), scientific, ISO/R 9, ISO 9, GOST 7.79B and others. Supports pre-reform characters
• The Writing on the Wall: The Russian Orthographic Reform of 1918
• Славеница (Slavenitsa): online converter from post-1918 to pre-1918 Russian

• Russian orthography
• Russian language

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