The hyphen as a non-traditional sign of orthography

Abstract

In this study we consider such a nonalphabetical sign of Russian orthography, as the hyphen, which was field of increased focus of the famous Kazakh scientist N.I. Gainullina. Attention is drawn to the fact that in the written works of today’s bachelor’s, master’s degree student and even postgraduate students are confused three characters: a dash as a punctuation mark, a hyphen as a sign of orthography and em dash, or “long dash”, which appeared as a result of the development of information technology and computer-network topics, the so-called “Internet” “long dash”. Based on the material of examples of writing Russian toponyms found that among the currently existing recommendations on the use of hyphen and contained in the current, known to all Russian speakers set of orthographic rules, there is no clear notation that would provide for its use for the division of complex toponyms; we highlight the reasons for the unresolved spelling of complex toponyms. It has been established that the “expressive purposes” of the hyphen usage, the statement of which contradicts the traditional spelling of the word, and it is proved that the use of the hyphen in various texts should be considered as a manifestation of the individual author’s handwriting features, when the main goal of the author of the text is achieved-to convey the proposed subtleties of the meaning of words and the elegance of the formula of self - expression.