Russian Punctuation and Quotation Marks

Russian punctuation looks familiar — the same dots, commas, dashes, and question marks as English — and that familiarity is a trap. Several of the marks do completely different jobs, two of them are non-negotiable where English would leave you free to choose, and a few habits English speakers consider universal (Title Case, the decimal point, capitalising "Monday") are simply wrong in Russian. This page covers the conventions that actually differ: the quotation marks, the dash that stands in for "to be", the comma rules that are grammar rather than style, and the small typographic differences in numbers and capitals. (The fine-grained comma rules that depend on specific clause types are developed in the Syntax section; here we cover the principle and the everyday cases.)

Quotation marks: «ёлочки» and „лапки“

Russian's primary quotation marks are guillemets — angled double marks « » — affectionately called ёлочки (yólochki, "little fir-trees") for their pointed shape. They sit on the baseline and point outward, hugging the quoted text. The straight English quotes "…" are simply not the Russian standard.

When you need a quotation inside a quotation, Russian switches to a second pair: „лапки“ (lápki, "little paws"), a low-opening, high-closing pair borrowed from German typography — „ opens at the bottom, “ closes at the top. The nesting order is fixed: ёлочки on the outside, лапки on the inside.

The dash as the present-tense "to be"

This is the feature English speakers miss most often. Russian has no present-tense verb "to be" in ordinary sentences — there is no word for is/am/are. When you link two nouns (or a noun and a noun phrase) in the present, the gap left by the missing verb is filled, in writing, by a dash (—).

The dash here is not decoration and not a pause for effect — it is the orthographic stand-in for the absent copula, and in careful writing it is expected. (The deeper grammar of these verbless equational sentences, including when no dash appears, is on the nominal copula page.) The rule of thumb: when both sides are nouns and the link is present-tense "is", write a dash. When the subject is a pronoun (Он врач, "He is a doctor") or the predicate is an adjective (Москва́ большая, "Moscow is big"), the dash is normally dropped.

The obligatory comma before subordinate clauses

In English you have latitude: I think (that) he's right is fine with or without "that", and short subordinate clauses often go uncommaed. Russian gives you no such freedom. A comma is grammatically required at the boundary of a subordinate clause — before the conjunction or relative word that introduces it. This is the rule that, more than any other, separates correct Russian from foreign-looking Russian.

The high-frequency triggers a learner meets first are что (chto, "that"), кото́рый (kotóryy, "which/who"), что́бы (chtóby, "so that / in order to"), and потому́ что (potomú chto, "because"). A comma sits before each of these whenever it opens a clause.

Note the second example: a relative clause embedded in the middle of the sentence is fenced off by commas on both sides — one before который, one after the clause ends. English drops these commas for restrictive clauses ("the book that you gave me", no commas); Russian does not. The mechanics of который-clauses are on the relative clauses page, and что/чтобы on the chto and chtoby page; here the takeaway is the principle.

Commas around an address

When you call someone by name (a direct address), Russian sets it off with commas, just as English does — but Russian applies it strictly, including with the ubiquitous polite formulas.

Direct speech: the dash, not quotation marks

In running dialogue — the back-and-forth of a conversation in a story — Russian does not wrap each line in quotation marks. Instead, each new speaker's line begins on its own line with an em dash (—). Quotation marks («…») are reserved for quoting within a sentence (a sign, a title, a remark cited inline); the dash is for the flow of a scene.

When a narrative tag ("he said", "she asked") interrupts the speech, it too is bracketed by dashes and lower-cased.

This is purely a punctuation convention, but it is the one that makes a page of Russian fiction look instantly different from English fiction — a column of dashes down the left margin rather than nested quotation marks.

Colons and dashes in lists and explanations

A colon introduces a list or an explanation, much as in English, after a generalising word:

A dash does the reverse — it can close a list that comes before a summarising word, or mark a sharp conclusion. And crucially, Russian uses no Oxford comma: in a list of three, there is no comma before the final и ("and"). Писать «хлеб, молоко, и сыр» with a comma before и is an English habit and is wrong in Russian.

Numbers: the decimal comma and the space separator

Russian follows continental-European number formatting, which is the mirror image of British/American style.

• The decimal separator is a comma, not a point: write 3,14, not 3.14. Read aloud as «три це́лых четы́рнадцать со́тых» (the deeper grammar of fractions and decimals is on the fractions and decimals page).
• The thousands separator is a space (ideally a thin space), not a comma: 1 000 000, not 1,000,000.

So the two roles of the comma and the period are swapped relative to English. If you carry the English convention over, 3.14 will look to a Russian reader like a date or a typo, and 1,200 like one-point-two.

Lowercase where English capitalises

Russian capitalises far less than English. Three categories that English speakers reflexively capitalise are lowercase in Russian:

• Months and days of the week: янва́рь (yanvár', "January"), понеде́льник (ponedél'nik, "Monday").
• Nationalities and adjectives of nationality, and names of languages: ру́сский (rússkiy, "Russian"), англича́нин (anglichánin, "an Englishman"), по-неме́цки ("in German").
• There is no Title Case. In a book or film title, Russian capitalises only the first word (and any proper nouns inside it) — never every major word the way English does.

(The complete rules for what does take a capital — proper names, the first word of a sentence, the formal Вы in letters — are on the capitalization rules page.)

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Primary quotation marks are guillemets «ёлочки»; nested quotes use „лапки“ inside them. Straight English quotes are not the standard.
• The dash (—) replaces the present-tense "to be" between two nouns: Москва́ — столи́ца Росси́и; Мой брат — врач. It is a core feature, dropped when the subject is a pronoun or the predicate an adjective.
• A comma before a subordinate clause is obligatory, not stylistic — before что, кото́рый, что́бы, потому́ что, and every subordinator; embedded clauses are fenced on both sides.
• Direct speech in dialogue uses a dash, not quotation marks: — Приве́т, — сказа́л он.
• Numbers use a decimal comma (3,14) and a space as the thousands separator (1 000 000) — the reverse of English.
• Months, days, nationalities, and languages are lowercase, and there is no Title Case and no Oxford comma.