Typical mistakes in written speech of police officers

The major reference point of professional behaviour for police officers is the speech culture characterized by capability to select and use optimal language means in every situation of law-making and law enforcement. A police officer should have a comprehensive command of the culture of speech which requires development of all its components: standard, ethical and communicative. The object of the study with respect to the standard aspect is speech mistakes made by police officers in written speech, possible ways of correction being specified. The sources are official and procedural documents made by police officers. The attempted language stylistic analysis of professional texts enabled the authors to reveal typical mistakes (disregarding spelling, punctuation, lexical, grammatical and stylistic standards) and their origin (language negligence, mixture of different language phenomena, lack of experience in making up various texts and some others). The authors make the conclusion that observance of standard language rules by police officers is an integral part of their professional activity and police officer's professional speech is a form of standard language, therefore, strict observance of language rules is mandatory as it is the main condition ensuring culture of speech.