It is not so difficult to count how many punctuation marks there are in Russian. It is enough to take an arbitrary text with direct speech, at least one clarification in brackets and a quote for the sake of quotes. And yet, some signs that are found everywhere have nothing to do with Russian punctuation, and not much is known about others, although many of them are "dinosaurs" of writing.
There are only ten punctuation marks in Russian: period, colon, ellipsis, comma, semicolon, dash, question mark, exclamation mark, brackets, quotes.
Point
Along with the emergence of writing, it became necessary to somehow indicate to the reader that the sentence is finished. The ancestors of the modern dot are the straight vertical line (Sanskrit) and the circle (。, Chinese). In Russian, the point is first recorded in the monuments of ancient writing. Traditionally, a period is placed at the end of every sentence, except for headings and when sentences end with an ellipsis, question mark, or exclamation mark combined with quotation marks.
Colon
Although this sign appeared much later than the dot, it entered Russian grammar at the end of the 16th century. It was used by Lavrenty Tustanovsky, the compiler of one of the first textbooks of Slavic philology. Most often, a colon is placed before an enumeration or when formalizing a direct speech (quotation), but there are also such complex cases of its statement as using a colon instead of a union. For example, between sentences when describing sensations: “When we reach the river, we see: the boat is floating, and there is nobody in it”.
Ellipsis
The sign of pause, incompleteness, speech hitch - ellipsis - is described in the "Grammar of the Church Slavonic language" by Pushkin's contemporary Alexander Vostokov. it is also called a "restraining sign" …
Comma
"Dot with a squiggle" argues with dot for the first place among the most common punctuation marks in the Russian language. In an average complexity of a text of 1000 characters, there may not be a single dash, not a single pair of quotation marks or brackets, but commas will be required. And if the author turns out to be a lover of turns and introductory words, then the comma will become the champion. The word "comma", according to the Soviet linguist Pavel Chernykh, comes from "comma" ("clue"), but the sign itself is borrowed from the Italian language.
Semicolon
Another Italian invention that made its way into the Russian language along with book printing. This sign was invented and introduced into written speech in the middle of the 15th century by the typographer Ald Manutius. With the help of a semicolon, he separated parts of sentences that were connected by meaning, but had an independent syntax. In Russian it is used for the same purpose, as well as in complex enumerations.
Dash
There is no exact information about the origin of the dash. Approximately corresponding "lines" in their meaning are found in many ancient written artifacts. It owes its modern name to France (tiret from tirer, to pull), and in the Russian language, as most researchers believe, it was popularized by Karamzin, at the time of which this sign was called "silent". It is used in many cases, the most famous of which is when the subject and predicate are expressed in one part of speech, as well as when making remarks and dialogues. In Russian typography, an em dash (-) is used, and it is always separated from the previous and subsequent words by spaces, except for its use in intervals (August 1-8), although more and more often in such cases they put a short, "English" dash (1- 8 August).
Question and exclamation marks
Both signs appeared in Russian at about the same time, in the middle of the 2nd millennium AD. Both are from the Latin language, where the question mark used to be a graphic abbreviation (ligature) of the letters Q and O (from quaestio, question) and was used in cases when it was necessary to indicate doubt, and the exclamation mark from the exclamation of surprise lo. Gradually, both ligatures became independent non-letter punctuation marks, and the original name was given from the dots: "question point" and "point of surprise".
Brackets
The paired sign, today called brackets, once had a very beautiful name "capacious" or "local sign". In languages, including Russian, brackets came from mathematics, and specifically from the entry introduced by the Italian Niccolo Tartaglia for radical meanings. Later mathematicians will prefer square and curly brackets for different needs, and round ones will remain in written speech to record explanations and remarks.
Quotes
Another paired sign that came into the language … from the musical notation, and its Russian name, in all likelihood, got its name from the Little Russian verb "kovykat" ("hobble like a duck", "limp"). Indeed, if you write quotation marks as it is customary by hand („“), they are very similar to paws. By the way, a pair of quotation marks " are called "paws", and ordinary typographic quotation marks " are called "herringbones".
Signs … but not signs
The hyphen, which, by analogy with the dash, many people take for a punctuation mark, is not. Together with the stress mark, it refers to A, the frequently occurring ampersand (&), although it looks like a punctuation mark, but in fact is a ligature of the Latin union et.
A controversial point is considered a gap. By its task of separating words, it can be classified as punctuation marks, but can emptiness be called a sign? Except technically.
