Punctuation culture in the district newspaper «Visnyk Demudivshchyny» at the level of complex sentences

Abstract

Punctuation culture in the district newspaper «Visnyk Demudivshchyny» at the level of complex sentences. The article deals with research of punctuation culture in the regional publication «Visnyk Demudivshchyny» (Journal of Demydivka Area) at the level of complex constructions. In times of modernization of society, when mass media reflect language culture presenting relevant information, media workers need to be aware of the level of responsibility not only for the content of the covered material, but also for its language design. Modern journalistic materials often do not meet the criteria of literacy, which leads to the need to study the linguistic culture of media texts at various levels, including punctuation. Complex sentences are characterized by a high degree of linguistic risk. The error-prone places in the use of punctuation marks were identified in the design of such constructions in the analyzed publication and that fact determines the relevance of the proposed scientific research.

The objectives of the research are to analyze punctuation culture of complex sentences in the district newspaper «Visnyk Demudivshchyny»; to identify and classify abnormities by frequency; to determine the degree of linguistic risk for each type. Actual material for the implementation of the goals was selected from 50 issues of the regional edition for 2022. Emphasis is placed on the main positions of the use of mandatory and optional punctuation marks in complex sentences of the analyzed publication. The detected abnormities are differentiated by the type of connection in complex constructions.

Results. It has been found out that the highest degree of linguistic risk has errors associated with the incorrect punctuation of complex multi-component constructions, among which cases of violation of punctuation norms in the subordinating relations are most often observed. A smaller number of irregularities are recorded in compound sentences. Sporadic examples of non-observance of punctuation rules in complex constructions have been found. There were some isolated errors in non-conjunctive complex sentences.

Conclusions. The most frequent in the studied media texts are abnormalities associated with the omission of the necessary punctuation mark. Errors caused by the presence of an extra punctuation mark or the wrong punctuation mark, which is necessary in a specific case, are fixed much less often.