Transbaikal documents of the 17th century as a linguistic source: graphic and orthographic features

The article presents the graphic and orthographic description of the original Siberian documents of the 17th century based on the text "Otpiska desyatnika Selenginskoi sluzhby Vas'ki o zlodeyaniyakh, chinimykh mungal'skimi vorovskimi lyud'mi - Reply of the foreman of Selenginsk service Vaska about the atrocities committed by the Mongol thieves" (1682), written in the territory of Transbaikalia. This business text is a typical handwritten document of regional clerical work of the 17th century. Its paleographic features are characteristic of business papers of that period - the absence of a space between function words and content words, use of alphabetic numerals for dating, presence of extruders, abbreviation of sacred and frequently used words by applying a titlo, doublet letters in one word, a variety of typefaces of the same letters, diacritics which often have a decorative function. An analysis of graphics and orthography allowed us to draw the following conclusions: the document was created according to the graphic and spelling rules of Russian cursive writing of the 18th century. The scriptor strictly follows the standards of business writing of the 17th century, which are subject to the phonetic principle of spelling and had been developed in the official usage over two centuries.