Vowels o/e after the sibilants in the Russian spelling of XVIII century
The analysis of the vast and versatile material containing both printed and handwritten texts of the XVIII century proves the appearance and spread of colloquialisms in the written records, which is represented by the spelling of the stressed letter <o> after sibilants, irrespective of its position. It is the spelling of the XVIII century that determines the most frequent suggestion as to the spelling reform of the previous century. The spelling was later standardized in the following rule of modern orthography: the letter <o> is to be used in the stressed suffixes and inflexions of nouns and adverbs.