THE USE OF UPPERCASE AND LOWERCASE LETTERS: ACADEMIC NORM, CORPORATE NORM, USAGE

The article addresses one of the relevant problems of modern Russian orthography, namely the use of uppercase and lowercase letters. It analyses main criteria, on which the rules of the selection of an uppercase orlowercase letter listed in modern spelling reference books and practical manuals (syntactic, morphological, word-formational, semantic, stylistic) are based. It is evident that, in spite of the availability of specialized dictionaries and reference literature, the requirement for information on this subject is apparently not entirely satisfied. The proof, besides a large number of mistakes, as well as questions from native speakers, is the ap- pearance of local instructions, aimed at the full description of all the instances of an uppercase letter use in texts of certain genres and themes. These instructions suggest the co-existence of the academic standard and local or corporate norms of modern Russian spelling, with the second ones not only supplementing the first one, but sometimes coming into conflict with it. The analysis of the linguistic material reveals rivalry between the academic standard and corporate standards of an uppercase or a lowercase letter use.