Russian and Serbian Punctuation of the 21st Century: An Attempt at Comparative Description

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Purpose. The authors conducted a comparative study of the general statistical characteristics of modern Russian and Serbian punctuation practice using the material of Internet texts from the early 20s of the 21st century.Results. The authors analyzed three important characteristics of punctuation practice: the composition and frequency of punctuation situations, the lexical indicators of syntactic relations used (conjunctions, particles, introductory words, etc.), and the occurrence of punctuation marks. The Russian and Serbian parts of the sample are balanced in terms of the number of uses of punctuation marks and in terms of their focus/lack of focus on compliance with the norm on the Internet platforms provided to the authors of the texts. The comparative study revealed similarities and differences in all analyzed parameters.Conclusion. It was found that the high degree of similarity of the main indicators caused by the kinship and typological similarity of the languages is combined with obvious differences, including different occurrence of punctuation situations in graphic practice, different composition and different activity of formal indicators of syntactic connection, different density of punctuation marks per punctuation situation. This means that a comparative study of punctuation practice taking into account statistical data allows us to identify the real relationship between the two punctuation systems, rather than the relationship set by normative documents.