On Variable Spelling of Lowercase and Uppercase Letters in Some Groups of the Russian Language Vocabulary

A rather diffi cult problem in producing text in Russian is the choice of lowercase or uppercase letters for some words. Recommendations on the use of lowercase and uppercase letters do exist in spelling dictionaries and reference books — including materials approved by the Spelling Commission at the Department of Language and Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, in practice these recommendations are not followed in some texts of print media and in a number of offi cial documents, moreover, according to the data of the Russian National Corpus, inconsistency in using lowercase and uppercase letters in individual lexical units is often observed (cf., for example, Государственная дума (the State duma) — Государственная Дума (the State Duma), Верховный суд (the Supreme court) — Верховный Суд (the Supreme Court) , Великий пост (Great lent) — великий пост (great lent) — Великий Пост (Great Lent), Страшный суд (the Last judgment) — Страшный Суд (the Last Judgment) etc.). The aim of this contribution is to identify spelling variants of lowercase / uppercase letters that are relevant for two groups of vocabulary of the Russian language — titles of state and administrative bodies of the Russian Federation and words from clerical and religious spheres of the modern Russia; and to point out some reasons of such discrepancies in spelling of the corresponding words.