Rules for writing E and E in documents. The letter e - is it needed in the Russian language? To write or not to write? Why is it written instead of the letter e?

On November 29 (November 18, old style), 1783, in the house of the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, one of the first meetings of the newly created Russian Academy was held, which was attended by the poet Gabriel Derzhavin, playwrights Denis Fonvizin and Jacob Knyazhnin and others. The project of a complete explanatory Slavic-Russian dictionary, the later famous 6-volume Dictionary of the Russian Academy, was discussed.

Dashkova suggested that those present at the meeting introduce a new letter “ё” to represent the corresponding sound in writing, instead of the two letters “io”. For the “minor” letter in the Russian alphabet, they did not invent a new sign: they used the existing letter e, placing two dots above it - an umlaut. The princess's innovative idea was supported by a number of leading cultural figures of the time. Gabriel Derzhavin was the first to use the letter “ё” in personal correspondence. In November 1784, the new letter received official recognition.

The letter was replicated by a printing press in 1795 at the Moscow University Printing House with the publishers Ridiger and Claudius during the publication of the book “And My Trinkets” by Ivan Dmitriev. The first word printed with the letter "е" was the word "everything". Then came the words “light”, “stump”, “immortal”, “cornflower”. In 1796, in the same printing house, Nikolai Karamzin, in his first book “Aonid” with the letter “e”, printed the words “dawn”, “eagle”, “moth”, “tears” and the first verb - “flowed”. In 1798, Gabriel Derzhavin used his first surname with the letter “e” - Potemkin.

In 1904, the Spelling Commission was created at the Imperial Academy of Sciences, which included the largest linguists of that time. The commission's proposals, finally formulated in 1912, boiled down to simplifying graphics based on the phonemic principle (eliminating letters that did not denote any sounds, for example "ъ" at the end of words, and letters denoting the same sounds as other letters, "yat" ", "and decimal", "fita", "izhitsa"). In addition, the commission recognized the use of the letter “ё” as desirable, but not mandatory.

On January 5, 1918 (December 23, 1917, old style), a decree was published, signed by the Soviet People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, who introduced reformed spelling as mandatory and also recommended the use of the letter "ё".

In Soviet times, the letter "ё" was "officially recognized" in 1942, after the publication of the order "On the introduction of the mandatory use of the letter "ё" in school practice." A year later, a reference book on the use of the letter “ё” was published. In 1956, the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR approved and then published the “Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation” with paragraphs on the use of the letter “ё”. However, in practice its use continued to be optional.

The Russian Federation regulates the use of the letter “ë” in title documents. In a letter from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation dated May 3, 2007, authorities issuing official state-issued documents to citizens are instructed to use the letter “ё” in proper names.

A letter from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation dated July 20, 2009 recommends using the letter “ё” in school textbooks.

Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Dmitry Livanov, the rules for using the letters “e” and “e” should be enshrined at the legislative level.

Now the letter “е” is contained in more than 12.5 thousand words, in no less than 2.5 thousand surnames of citizens of Russia and the former USSR, in thousands of geographical names of Russia and the world and in thousands of names and surnames of citizens of foreign countries.

In 2005, in Ulyanovsk the letter “ё” was established. The author of the monument, Ulyanovsk artist Alexander Zinin, depicted an exact enlarged copy of the letter that was used in the almanac "Aonids", where Nikolai Karamzin first published a poem with a new letter.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

For a long time, the Russian language did not have the famous letter “ё”. But this letter can boast that the date of its birth is known - namely, November 29, 1783. The “mother” of the letter is Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, an enlightened princess.

Let's remember the details of this event...

In the house of Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, who was at that time the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a meeting of the Academy of Literature, created shortly before this date, was held. Present then were G. R. Derzhavin, D. I. Fonvizin, Ya. B. Knyazhnin, Metropolitan Gabriel and others.

And once during one of the meetings she asked Derzhavin to write the word “Christmas tree”. Those present took the proposal as a joke. After all, it was clear to everyone that it was necessary to write “iolka”. Then Dashkova asked a simple question. Its meaning made academicians think. Indeed, is it reasonable to designate one sound when writing with two letters? The princess's proposal to introduce a new letter “e” into the alphabet with two dots on top to indicate the sound “io” was appreciated by literature experts. This story happened in 1783. And then off we went. Derzhavin began to use the letter “ё” in personal correspondence, then Dmitriev published the book “My Trinkets” with this letter, and then Karamzin joined the “e-movement”.

The image of the new letter was probably borrowed from the French alphabet. A similar letter is used, for example, in the spelling of the Citroën car brand, although it sounds completely different in this word. Cultural figures supported Dashkova’s idea, and the letter took root. Derzhavin began using the letter e in personal correspondence and used it for the first time when writing his last name - Potemkin. However, in print - among typographical letters - the letter е appeared only in 1795. Even the first book with this letter is known - this is the book of the poet Ivan Dmitriev “My trinkets”. The first word, over which two dots were blackened, was the word “everything”, followed by the words: light, stump, etc.

A widely known new letter e became thanks to the historian N.M. Karamzin. In 1797, Nikolai Mikhailovich decided to replace two letters in the word “sl” when preparing to publish one of his poems io zy" with one letter e. So, with Karamzin’s light hand, the letter “е” took its place in the sun and became entrenched in the Russian alphabet. Due to N.M. Karamzin was the first to use the letter ё in a printed publication, which was published in a fairly large circulation; some sources, in particular, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, erroneously indicate him as the author of the letter ё.

In the first book of the poetic almanac “Aonids” (1796) he published, he printed the words “dawn”, “eagle”, “moth”, “tears” and the first verb with the letter e - “flowed”. But, oddly enough, in the famous “History of the Russian State” Karamzin did not use the letter “ё”.

The letter came into place in the alphabet in the 1860s. IN AND. Dahl placed е along with the letter “e” in the first edition of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. In 1875, L.N. Tolstoy in his “New ABC” sent it to 31st place, between yat and the letter e. But the use of this symbol in typography and publishing was associated with some difficulties due to its non-standard height. Therefore, the letter e officially entered the alphabet and received the serial number 7 only in Soviet times - December 24, 1942. However, for many decades, publishers continued to use it only in cases of extreme necessity, and even then mainly in encyclopedias. As a result, the letter “е” disappeared from the spelling (and then pronunciation) of many surnames: Cardinal Richelieu, philosopher Montesquieu, poet Robert Burns, microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur, mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev (in the latter case, the place of emphasis even changed: CHEBYSHEV; exactly the same the beets became beets). We speak and write Depardieu instead of Depardieu, Roerich (who is pure Roerich), Roentgen instead of the correct Roentgen. By the way, Leo Tolstoy is actually Leo (like his hero - the Russian nobleman Levin, and not the Jew Levin).

The letter е also disappeared from the spellings of many geographical names - Pearl Harbor, Königsberg, Cologne, etc. See, for example, the epigram on Lev Pushkin (the authorship is not exactly clear):
Our friend Pushkin Lev
Not without reason
But with champagne fatty pilaf
And a duck with milk mushrooms
They will prove to us better than words,
That he is healthier
By the strength of the stomach.

When the Bolsheviks came to power, they “combed through” the alphabet, removed “yat” and fita and izhitsa, but did not touch the letter E. It was under Soviet rule that the points above e In order to simplify typing, most words were missing. Although no one formally banned or abolished it.

The situation changed dramatically in 1942. Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin received German maps on his desk, in which German cartographers wrote down the names of our settlements down to the dots. If the village was called “Demino”, then in both Russian and German it was written Demino (and not Demino). The Supreme Commander appreciated the enemy's meticulousness. As a result, on December 24, 1942, a decree was issued requiring the mandatory use of the letter Yoyo everywhere, from school textbooks to the Pravda newspaper. Well, of course, on the maps. By the way, no one has ever canceled this order!

Often the letter “е”, on the contrary, is inserted into words in which it is not needed. For example, “scam” instead of “scam”, “being” instead of “being”, “guardianship” instead of “guardianship”. The first Russian world chess champion was actually called Alexander Alekhine and was very indignant when his noble surname was spelled incorrectly, “commonly” - Alekhine. In general, the letter “е” is contained in more than 12 thousand words, in approximately 2.5 thousand surnames of citizens of Russia and the former USSR, in thousands of geographical names.

A categorical opponent of using this letter when writing is designer Artemy Lebedev. For some reason he didn't like her. It must be said that it is indeed inconveniently located on a computer keyboard. Of course, you can do without it, as, for example, the text will be understandable even if zngo sklcht vs glsn bkv. But is it worth it?

In recent years, a number of authors, in particular Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yuri Polyakov and others, some periodicals, as well as the scientific publishing house "Big Russian Encyclopedia" publish their texts with the obligatory use of the discriminated letter. Well, the creators of the new Russian electric car gave the name to their brainchild from this one letter.

Some statistics

In 2013, the letter Yoyo turns 230 years old!

She is in 7th (lucky!) place in the alphabet.

There are about 12,500 words in the Russian language with the letter Ё, of which about 150 words begin with е and about 300 words end with е!

On average, there is 1 letter e for every hundred characters of text. .

There are words in our language with two letters E: “three-star”, “four-bucket”.

There are several traditional names in the Russian language that contain the letter Ё:

Artyom, Parmen, Peter, Savel, Seliverst, Semyon, Fedor, Yarem; Alena, Matryona, Fyokla and others.

Optional use letters e leads to erroneous readings and the inability to restore the meaning of the word without additional explanations, for example:

Loan-loan; perfect-perfect; tears-tears; palate-palate; chalk-chalk; donkey-donkey; fun-fun...

And, of course, the classic example from “Peter the Great” by A.K. Tolstoy:

Under such a sovereign let's take a break!

It was meant - " let's take a break" Do you feel the difference?

How do you read “Let’s Sing Everything”? Are we all eating? Shall we eat everything?

And the last name of the French actor will be Depardieu, not Depardieu. (see Wikipedia)

And, by the way, A. Dumas’s cardinal’s name is not Richelieu, but Richelieu. (see Wikipedia)

And the correct way to pronounce the surname of the Russian poet is Fet, not Fet.

I would like to know what documents exist regulating the use of the letter “Y”. Thank you.

Serebryakov Sergey Nikolaevich

The decision of the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language notes that the first appearance of the letter Yo noted in print in 1795. It was used in the lifetime publications of A.S. Pushkin and other great Russian writers of the 19th century, the dictionary of V.I. Dahl, alphabet systems L.N. Tolstoy, K.D. Ushinsky. I.I. used this letter in his works. Dmitriev, G.R. Derzhavin, M.Yu. Lermontov, I.I. Kozlov, F.I. Tyutchev, I.I. Lazhechnikov, V.K. Kuchelbecker, I.S. Turgenev, gr. L.N. Tolstoy, K.D. Ushinsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.P. Chekhov and many others. After securing it in seventh place in the Russian alphabet of 33 letters after the reform of 1917-1918, the scope of its application in writing and in print steadily expanded.

Due to the rapid development of typographic activity at the end of the 19th century, the letter Yo began to be replaced from texts by a letter similar in appearance, but completely different E. This phenomenon had an economic justification: the presence of the letter E caused additional material costs in letter or linotype typesetting. Now the presence of letters in the text Yo with computer typing and layout using any typeface and typeface, it does not lead to an increase in printing costs. As the experience of magazines and newspapers has shown, it takes 3-4 months for editors and proofreaders to get used to correcting omissions of this letter.

Nowadays the letter Yo contained in more than 12,500 words, 2,500 surnames of citizens of Russia and the former USSR, thousands of geographical names of Russia and the world, names and surnames of citizens of foreign countries. According to statistics on the occurrence of Russian letters in various texts for the letter Yo the result is below 0.5 percent (less than once per 200 characters).

Russian citizens have problems with documents if in their last name, first name, place of birth, in some cases the letter Yo indicated, but not in others. Problems arise when filling out passports, birth certificates, registering inheritance, transliterating surnames, transmitting telegrams and in a number of other cases. About 3 percent of citizens of the Russian Federation have last names, first names or patronymics that contain the letter Yo, and often the entry in the passport turns out to be distorted. The reason for this is non-compliance with the requirement established by the Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation, approved in 1956, to use the letter Yo in cases where a word may be misread. Proper names (surnames, first names, patronymics, geographical names, names of organizations and enterprises) refer specifically to this case. Therefore, the use of the letter Yo in proper names must be indisputable and obligatory.

Depardieu or Depardieu? Richelieu, or maybe Richelieu? Fet or Fet? Where is the universe and where is the universe, which act was perfect and which was perfect? And how to read “Peter the Great” by A.K. Tolstoy, if we don’t know, should there be dots over the e in the sentence: “Under such and such a sovereign, we will rest!”? The answer is not so obvious, and the expression “dot the I” in Russian could well be replaced with “dot the E.”

This letter is replaced by “e” when printed, but is forced to put dots when writing by hand. But in telegrams, radio messages and Morse code it is ignored. It was moved from last to seventh place in the Russian alphabet. And she managed to survive the revolution, unlike, for example, the more ancient “fita” and “izhitsa”.
It goes without saying what difficulties owners of surnames with this letter face at passport offices. And even before the advent of passport offices, there was this confusion - so the poet Afanasy Fet forever remained Fet for us.
Whether this is acceptable or not is for the reader who has read to the end to judge.

Foreign ancestry

The youngest letter of the Russian alphabet “ё” appeared in it on November 29, 1783. It was proposed by Princess Dashkova at a meeting of the Russian Academy to replace the inconvenient combination of IO with a lid, as well as the rarely used signs ьо, їô, ió, io.

The very shape of the letter is borrowed from French or Swedish, where it is a full member of the alphabet, denoting, however, a different sound.
It is estimated that the frequency of occurrence of Russian Yo is 1% of the text. This is not so little: for every thousand characters (about half a page of printed text) there are on average ten “e”.
At different times, different options for transmitting this sound in writing were proposed. It was proposed to borrow the symbol from the Scandinavian languages ​​(ö, ø), Greek (ε - epsilon), simplify the superscript symbol (ē, ĕ), etc.

Path to the alphabet

Despite the fact that Dashkova proposed this letter, Derzhavin is considered its father in Russian literature. It was he who was the first to use the new letter in correspondence, and was also the first to type a surname with an “е”: Potemkin. At the same time, Ivan Dmitriev published the book “And My Trinkets”, imprinting all the necessary points in it. But “ё” acquired its final weight after N.M. Karamzin, an authoritative author, in the very first almanac he published, “Aonids” (1796), printed: “dawn”, “eagle”, “moth”, “tears”, as well as the first verb - “drip”. True, in his famous “History of the Russian State” “ё” did not find a place for itself.
And yet, the letter “ё” was in no hurry to be officially introduced into the Russian alphabet. Many were confused by the “shitty” pronunciation, because it was too similar to “servile”, “low”, while the solemn Church Slavonic language prescribed to pronounce (and, accordingly, write) “e” everywhere. Ideas about culture, nobility and intelligence could not come to terms with the strange innovation - two dots above the letter.
As a result, the letter “ё” entered the alphabet only in Soviet times, when no one was trying to show off their intelligence. E could be used in the text or replaced with “e” at the request of the writer.

Stalin and area maps

The letter “e” was looked at in a new way during the war years of the 1940s. According to legend, I. Stalin himself influenced its fate by ordering the mandatory printing of “ё” in all books, central newspapers and maps of the area. This happened because German maps of the area fell into the hands of Russian intelligence officers, which turned out to be more accurate and “meticulous” than ours. Where “yo” is pronounced, in these cards there was “jo” - that is, the transcription was extremely accurate. But on Russian maps the usual “e” was written everywhere, and villages with the names “Berezovka” and “Berezovka” could easily be confused. According to another version, in 1942 Stalin was given an order to sign, in which the names of all generals were written with an “e”. The leader was furious, and the next day the entire issue of the Pravda newspaper was full of superscripts.

The travails of typists

But as soon as control weakened, the texts rapidly began to lose their “e”. Now, in the era of computer technology, it is difficult to guess the reasons for this phenomenon, because they are... technical. On most typewriters there was no separate letter “е”, and typists had to contrive by doing unnecessary actions: type “e”, return the carriage, put a quotation mark. Thus, for each “e” they pressed three keys - which, of course, was not very convenient.
Those who write by hand spoke about similar difficulties, and in 1951 A. B. Shapiro wrote:
“...The use of the letter e has not received any widespread use in the press until now, and even in recent years. This cannot be considered a random phenomenon. ...The very shape of the letter е (a letter and two dots above it) is undoubtedly difficult from the point of view of the writer’s motor activity: after all, writing this frequently used letter requires three separate techniques (letter, dot and dot), and you need to watch every time so that the dots are symmetrically placed above the letter sign. ...In the general system of Russian writing, which has almost no superscripts (the letter y has a simpler superscript than ё), the letter ё is a very burdensome and, apparently, therefore unsympathetic exception.”

Esoteric disputes

The debate about “ё” has not stopped to this day, and the arguments of the parties are sometimes surprising in their unexpectedness. Thus, supporters of the widespread use of this letter sometimes base their argument on... esotericism. They believe that this letter has the status of “one of the symbols of Russian existence,” and therefore rejection of it is disdain for the Russian language and Russia. “A spelling error, a political error, a spiritual and moral error” is what the ardent defender of this letter, writer V. T. Chumakov, chairman of the “Union of Efficiators”, who created him, calls the spelling of e instead of e. Supporters of this point of view believe that 33 - the number of letters of the Russian alphabet - is a sacred number, and “ё” occupies the sacred 7th place in the alphabet.
“And until 1917, the letter Z was blasphemously located in the sacred seventh place of the 35-letter alphabet,” their opponents answer. They believe that the “e” should be dotted only in a few cases: “in cases of possible discrepancies; in dictionaries; in books for Russian language learners (i.e. children and foreigners); for the correct reading of rare toponyms, names or surnames.” In general, these are the rules that now apply to the letter “e”.

Lenin and "yo"

There was a special rule about how the patronymic name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin should be written. In the instrumental case it was obligatory to write Ilyich, while every other Ilyich of the Soviet Union after 1956 was prescribed to be called only Ilyich. The letter E highlighted the leader and emphasized his uniqueness. Interestingly, in the documents this rule was never canceled.
A monument to this cunning letter stands in Ulyanovsk - the hometown of the “yofikator” Nikolai Karamzin. Russian artists came up with a special icon - “epyrite” - to mark official publications, and Russian programmers - “etator” - a computer program that automatically places letters with dots in your text.

The letter E owes its appearance to changes in Russian phonetics. Once upon a time, O was not pronounced after soft consonants. That is why they said, for example, not a dog, but a dog. But at some point, E turned into O: this is how the modern pronunciation of words like honey, everything, and many others arose. True, for a long time there was no new designation for this sound. The writers calmly used the letters O and E: bees, honey. But in the 18th century, these words began to be written differently, using the combination io (everything-everything). It was then that it became obvious: a new letter was needed! Princess Dashkova and the writer Karamzin proposed replacing the two signs with one. This is how the letter E was born.

Were any other options considered?

Certainly. At different times, different ideas for replacing the letter E appeared. We could now write that very pronoun “everything” as “everything”. In both the 19th and 20th centuries, a wide variety of proposals were made: ö , ø , ε , ę , ē , ĕ . However, none of these options were approved.

Many people did not like the letter E and still do not like it. Why?

For a long time, “joking” was considered a sign of common speech. The letter was new, so it was treated with suspicion and even some contempt - as something alien that did not correspond to Russian linguistic traditions.

But there is another, very simple reason for dislike - the letter E is inconvenient to write, for this you need to perform three actions at once: write the letter itself, and then put two dots over it. Such a complex letter was perceived as a burden, some linguists noted. It was not easy for those who typed texts from Yo on typewriters. Soviet typists had to press three keys at once: letters e, carriage return, quotes.

By the way, even now they joke about those who type texts with Y on a computer: “Beware of people who type words with Y: if they can reach it on the keyboard, they will reach you!”

Is E a full-fledged letter, the same as all the others?

Complex issue. Since e appeared, the most contradictory opinions were expressed about it. Some linguists did not consider it an independent letter. For example, in an article from 1937, A. A. Reformatsky wrote: “Is there a letter in the Russian alphabet e? No. There is only the diacritic sign “umlaut” or “trema” (two dots above the letter), which is used to avoid possible misunderstandings ... "

Such icons above letters exist in many languages. And the speakers of these languages, as a rule, treat them very jealously. In France, for example, the government’s attempt to abandon the sign “aksan circonflex” (house above the letter) as part of a spelling reform caused a real storm: the French were ready to take to the streets to protect their favorite sign.

Does our Yo have defenders?

There are, and some more! Fighters for the “rights” of the letter E are called yofikators ( don't forget to reach for the letter E when you write this word). Yofikators ensure that the use of the letter e has become ubiquitous and mandatory. The fact is that they perceive words with E instead of E as an insult to the Russian language and even to Russia as a whole. For example, the writer, head of the “Union of Yofikators” V.T. Chumakov calls neglect of the letter E not only a spelling mistake, but also a political, spiritual, and moral mistake.

And linguists agree with him?

No, linguists are just not that categorical. The editor-in-chief of the Gramota.ru portal Vladimir Pakhomov calls the statement that E instead of E is a gross spelling error one of the myths about the Russian language. Of course, there are arguments both for and against. For example, the obligatory Yo would help to remember the correct pronunciation of some names, surnames and names of localities. But there is also a danger: if Yo is made mandatory, then the texts of the classics may begin to be “modernized”, and then Yo will appear where it should not be at all.

In what words is Yo pronounced by mistake?

There are quite a lot of such words. Can often be heard scam instead of scam or guardianship instead of guardianship. In fact, these words do not contain the letter E, and pronunciation with E is considered a gross spelling error. In the same list are words such as grenadier ( not a grenadier!) , expired in the meaning of time (it is impossible to say elapsed period)settled ( under no circumstances settled!),hagiography And being . Here, by the way, it is appropriate to recall director Yakin from the film “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession.” Yakin pronounces the word hagiography absolutely correct - through E, not through E.

Anewborn also without Yo?

You can write this word with E instead of E, but it is pronounced with E. That's right - newborn, not newborn!

Words are also pronounced with Yo obscene ( remember it, this word is very often pronounced incorrectly!), edge, worthless, windsurfing, bleeding (blood).

I'm completely confused. Still, if I don’t want to reach for Yo on the keyboard, am I not betraying the Russian language and my Motherland?

Of course no! There is no mistake or betrayal in refusing Yo. The letter E cannot be dispensed with except in textbooks for primary schoolchildren and in manuals for foreigners who do not know how to read and pronounce Russian words. In other cases, the decision is yours. However, if in correspondence about the weather you suddenly want to write something like “Tomorrow we will finally take a break from the cold,” try to reach out to E.