For nearly a century now this letter cannot be found where it was once so much needed. Forgotten and abolished by the 1917-1918 reforms, know it awakens feelings of nostalgia. It can still be found on billboards of places that try to get that old Russian royal look about them.
I introduce to you the Russian letter «Ъ» - tverdy znak. In the modern alphabet, it is the 28th letter. Up until the 1917-18, it was the 27th.Today it used as a dividing symbol within a word in the Russian language, but before hand, it was used in every single word that ended with a consonant.
By the way, in the book of Tolstoy “War and Peace” of 1897 the letter «Ъ» appeared 55 times on average on each page. That’s 110 000 appearances overall or 70 useless pages of the book.
If we were to count all of the books that were printed in the Russian empire per year, we would get roughly 8 and a half million pages with the letter. It was an obvious place to save money at.
Nearly a century past, no one would have cared for this letter. But it is a part of our history, a part of our literature and our Empirical history. All the more, it will be impossible to abolish it all together, as some church books are still being printed with the use of “tvedy znak”.
This article is written with the slight help of this source