Titles of Russian and Finnish scientific articles: two strategies within the same style

The article analyzes titles from the Finnish linguistic journal Virittaja and the peer-reviewed scientific journal Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University for the period from 2010 through 2024. The purpose of this study is to identify common features of titles for Finnish and Russian scientific articles on humanities. The hypothesis of the study is that within the same style, Finnish and Russian titles have significant structural differences. Titles, selected using a continuous sampling method, were analyzed across three dimensions: 1) syntactic structure, 2) conciseness, and 3) terminology saturation. The findings confirm the hypothesis and suggest that Finnish titles demonstrate greater structural diversity, conciseness, and terseness, while their terminology is more transparent compared to that of Russian titles. However, all these factors contribute to a greater semantic vagueness of Finnish titles. Although Russian titles adhere to stricter structural conventions, they tend to be more informative. The findings can be used for stylistic studies and inform future research on titles in various languages, while practically they can assist researchers in creating effective titles for their own scientific publications.