Article

Name: Practical punctuation of letters from the Great Patriotic War (a case study of the open archive of wartime letters, pismapobedy.ru)

Authors: Igor E. Kim

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract:

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the punctuation practices of Red Army soldiers and officers during the Great Patriotic War, drawing from the corpus of texts available on the “Letters of Victory” internet portal (https://pismapobedy.ru/). These frontline letters are distinguished by their unique textural characteristics, predominantly written on sheets of paper folded into an isosceles right triangle and sent without postage stamps. The correspondence analyzed reflects the diverse educational backgrounds of the participants, revealing a substantial disparity in literacy levels between enlisted personnel and officers. Notably, all authors were found to have committed various punctuation errors. A systematic description is provided of the key punctuation situations encountered in the texts, alongside the punctuation choices made by the authors. Besides standard syntactic environments, such as sentence boundaries, homogeneous sentence parts, and various types of complex clauses, several specific situations occurred with notable frequency. These include independent noun phrases, direct addresses to the recipient, introductory words, and appositions. These syntactic units can be identified as the essential requisites of a personal letter, serving as the structural elements of its epistolary “template.” The analysis reveals that punctuation marks are regularly omitted in syntactic environments where their application is mandatory according to codified normative rules. Significantly, these graphic omissions frequently coincide with the physical boundaries of textual measurement units, namely the ends of lines, paragraphs, and pages. Consequently, frontline letters demonstrate a system of “practical punctuation” aimed primarily at resolving communication challenges, rather than at exhibiting proficiency in formal punctuation norms.

Keywords: letters from the war, practical punctuation, punctuation situation, punctuation practice, end-of-line phenomena

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