In recent years, several fairly significant reforms have taken place in modern Russian. Whereas in colloquial and literary styles a person can afford to ignore some charters of grammar, in a business style, when drawing up official documents, it is necessary to adhere to the standards formed in various sets of rules and grammar dictionaries. One of the most burning issues related to this area of human activity is how to spell the "CEO" in official documents and business correspondence.
Spelling problems
If you carefully study the various forums and sites where people ask for help in matters of Russian grammar, you can understand that many native speakers have problems writing the phrase "general director", there is no clear certainty whether it is worth writing with large or with lowercase letter.
Sometimes people who seek help are sure of one or another spelling of a phrase, but they cannot clearly and consistently substantiate their point of view. All these problems with the way the "CEO" is spelled can be easily avoided by carefully studying and remembering the simple rules for writing the names of official positions in business documents.
General rules
In general terms, the rules for using lowercase and capital letters when writing the names of official posts can be formulated as follows: only the highest posts are written with a capital letter, for example: the President of the United States, the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
In all other cases, when it comes to official position, lowercase letter is used in the letter in official documents. For example: minister, chairman, director.
Individual cases
However, there are some pitfalls in these spelling rules. If it is a question of the highest position, but in an unofficial document, then it is permissible to write a word with a lowercase letter. For example: Emperor of Japan, Chancellor of Germany.
However, the writing of any posts, including the Director General, is also possible with a capital letter, if we are talking about private organizations or individual departments, where exactly such writing is spelled out in the charter. Therefore, with the question of how to spell "CEO", in some cases, you can refer to the charter of the organization.
There are also several other pitfalls. When it comes to signing on an official document, the business style rules of the modern Russian language are recommended to write "general director" with a capital letter. As the name of this post is written in the document itself, it is already declared using the general rules of the Russian language or regulatory documents of a company or department.
Regulatory documents and history
All these rules are formulated in the "Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation," issued in 1956 jointly by the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Education. All compilers of grammar dictionaries and school textbooks refer to this normative document as a source, and it is they who should be guided when you try to understand how the "general director" is spelled.
Since 1956, the rules for writing official job titles in documents have not changed.
Examples of use
Here are some examples of when and how the "CEO" is written with a small letter and its use in the sentence:
- Viktor Ivanovich was appointed to the post of CEO in December 2012.
- Yesterday a meeting of the board of directors with the general director took place.
- The general director calls you to his office.
Pronunciation rules and grammatical properties
The phrase "CEO" is sustainable, therefore, in the proposal acts as a noun phrase and may be subject.
With regard to the rules for pronouncing questions, people as a whole have much less questions than with what letter “general director” is written. In the word "general" the stress falls on the third syllable, and in the word "director" - on the second. If necessary, you can easily find special sites on the Internet where native speakers pronounce the phrase clearly and legibly.
In colloquial speech, one can also often find an abbreviated version of “gender” or simply “general director”. In this case, the word acts as a noun of the second declension. The use of this option is unacceptable in the business style of the Russian language, but is found everywhere in the colloquial style and sometimes in the literary style, when the author intentionally uses vernacular. Judging by the information from dictionaries and reference books, such a reduction option appeared in the nineties of the last century.
Common mistakes
Often, when preparing official documents, employees deliberately ignore the generally accepted rules of the Russian literary language and write the phrase "CEO" with a capital letter, even if there are no regulatory documents of the company that dictate this spelling option. This happens, most likely, as an expression of respect for the authorities, but this practice is rapidly disappearing and today less and less often you can find such an option for writing this phrase in official documents.
It is worth noting that despite the illiteracy of this approach, the spelling of the "general director" with a capital letter does not affect the legal validity of the document. Nevertheless, ignoring the generally accepted rules of the modern Russian language in official documents of a company may adversely affect its image.
Difficult cases
Even after you have finally figured out how to spell the "CEO", all the same, unexpected difficulties may arise associated with changes in the leadership of the organization. In this case, it is also important to know how to correctly write in official documents such wording as “acting” and “temporarily acting”.
When the Director-General vacates his post, an Acting Director is temporarily appointed in his place. In this case, it is very important to distinguish between two options for writing the position of a new leader.
If the general director has left his post temporarily, the term of his return to work is known, for example, due to illness, for family reasons, he simply went on vacation, then the person replacing him for the period of absence is called the acting general director.
If the old Director General is dismissed, resigned of his own free will, his return is not planned, then another employee will be appointed in his place, until the appointment of a new Director General or, if the position is elected, before the election of a new leader. In this case, the phrase "acting general director" is used. It is worth mentioning that the difference between the two expressions is not formulated legally, however, according to the unspoken rules of business style, it is worth using them that way.
It is normal practice to use the abbreviation "acting" and the acronym "interim." An acronym is a type of abbreviation made up of the first letters of all words in an expression. As the spelling out of the “acting general director” is a big problem for many native speakers of the Russian language. This acronym is written without dots, always with a lowercase letter (except when it is at the beginning of a sentence).
How to spell "CEO" is a much simpler question. This is a common abbreviation in the Russian language, which can be found much more often. Dots are put between the two letters of the abbreviation, it is written with a lowercase letter.
Declining Maternity
Also, problems can arise when using the feminine when writing posts, especially the CEO, many have problems with the declension of this word. How do you spell "CEO" in the feminine? According to the rules of the Russian language, the name of the post of the masculine gender, which does not have a paired education of the feminine gender, does not change even with the first name and surname of the feminine gender. However, the predicate in this case is posited in the feminine.
In colloquial speech, one can sometimes find the use of the vernacular director’s ’, but in the business style and official documents, the use of this form is unacceptable and is a gross violation of the rules. In general, even in colloquial speech it is worth avoiding such words, they often carry a dismissive, negative connotation.
If you study all the rules, remember them and periodically apply them in practice, you can easily remember how the "CEO" is written, and never again ask this question. In official documents, you always need to first of all be guided by regulatory documents in which the rules of the modern Russian language are formulated, and not by your personal feelings and concepts about how a particular word should be written.
You also need to carefully study the corporate charter or other regulatory document, especially if you have recently started working in a new organization in order to avoid unpleasant mistakes when writing the phrase "CEO" and other management positions.