MOSCOW, February 28. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that seeks to encourage compliance with the rules of the literary Russian language and restrain the use of foreign words, according to a copy of the law that was published on Tuesday.

The law prescribes that, if the Russian language is used as the national language, "the norms of the contemporary Russian literary language shall be followed," such as the rules that are recorded in dictionaries, reference books and grammar books. A government commission will put together a procedure for compiling and endorsing a list of them and issue the requirements for compiling, and the frequency of publication, of dictionaries, which will then be subject to approval by the cabinet.

Before, it was also against the law to use words and phrases that didn’t conform with the norms of the contemporary literary Russian language, including obscenities. Exception will be made, as before, for foreign words that don’t have widely used Russian equivalents. The list of these words will be published in dictionaries and reference books.