Counting how many punctuation marks are in Russian is not so difficult. It is enough to take an arbitrary text with direct speech, at least one clarification in brackets and a quote for 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: a dot, a colon, an ellipsis, a comma, a semicolon, a dash, a question mark, an exclamation mark, brackets, quotation marks.
Point
Along with the emergence of writing, the need arose to somehow indicate to the reader that the proposal was completed. The ancestors of the modern point are a straight vertical line (Sanskrit) and a circle (。, Chinese). In Russian, the point was first recorded in the monuments of ancient writing. Traditionally, a period is placed at the end of each sentence, with the exception of headings and cases where sentences end with an ellipsis, question or exclamation mark in combination with quotation marks.
Colon
Although this sign appeared much later than the point, it entered Russian grammar at the end of the 16th century. It was used by Lavrenty Tustansky, the compiler of one of the first textbooks of Slavic philology. Most often, the colon is placed before the listing or when making direct speech (quotation), but there are also such complex cases of its statement as the use of a colon instead of a union. For example, between sentences in the description of sensations: "We reached the river, we see: the boat is sailing, and nobody is in it."
Ellipsis
The sign of a pause, incompleteness, speech hitch - an ellipsis - is described in the "Grammar of Church Slavonic" by Pushkin's contemporary Alexander Vostokov, however, some researchers note that the ellipsis was encountered earlier, and Vostokov was only enshrined in scientific work, and in the Grammar it also called a "restraint mark" …
Comma
"Point with a squiggle" argues with a point for first place among the most common punctuation marks in Russian. In medium complexity, a 1000-character text may not have 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 a champion. The word "comma", according to the Soviet linguist Pavel Chernykh, comes from the "comma" ("clue"), but the sign itself is borrowed from the Italian language.
Semicolon
Another Italian invention, which moved to the Russian language along with typography. This sign was invented and introduced into writing by the typographer Ald Manutius in the middle of the 15th century. Using a semicolon, he separated the parts of sentences connected by meaning, but with independent syntax. In Russian, it is used for the same purpose, as well as in complex transfers.
Dash
There is no exact data on the origin of the dash. Roughly corresponding to the meaning of the "dash" found in many ancient written artifacts. It owes its modern name to France (tiret from tirer, pull), and in the Russian language, as most researchers believe, it was popularized by Karamzin, during which this sign was called "silence." It is used in many cases, the most famous of which are when the subject and predicate are expressed in one part of speech, as well as in the design of replicas and dialogs. Russian typography uses a long dash (-), and it is always separated from the previous and subsequent words by spaces, except for its use in the intervals (August 1–8), although more often in such cases they put a short, “English” dash (1– 8 August).
Question and exclamation marks
Both signs appeared in the Russian language at about the same time, in the middle of the 2nd millennium A.D. 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 where it was necessary to indicate doubt, and exclamation from the exclamation of surprise lo. Gradually, both ligatures became independent non-alphabetic punctuation marks, and received the original name from the dots: "interrogative point" and "point of surprise."
Parentheses
The double sign, today referred to as brackets, once had a very beautiful name "roomy" or "room sign". The brackets came to languages, including Russian, from mathematics, and specifically, from a record introduced by Italian Niccolo Tartaglia for radical values. Later, mathematicians would prefer brackets and brackets for different needs, and round brackets will remain in written language for recording explanations and remarks.
Quotes
Another paired character that came into the language … from musical notation, and received its Russian name, in all likelihood, from the Little Russian verb "to wobble" ("waddle in the duck", "limp"). Indeed, if you write quotation marks in the way that is customary by hand (""), they are very similar to the paws. By the way, a pair of quotation marks ““ are called “paws”, and ordinary typographic quotation marks “” are called “Christmas trees”.
