Современные молитвословы на церковнославянском языке по большей части печатаются «гражданским шрифтом», то есть с помощью тех же букв, что и книги на русском языке, без «ятей» и «ижиц», но и без букв «э», «е». Таким же образом (поскольку это проще для большинства читателей) печатаются тексты молитв и в данной книге. «Гражданские» молитвословы дореволюционной поры тоже печатались теми же шрифтами, что книги на русском языке, поэтому в них были также буквы Ѣ (ять, передаваемый в современном письме буквой «е»), (фита — теперешнее «ф»), V (йжица — заменяется в некоторых случаях буквой «и», в некоторых — буквой «в»). Сориентироваться в этом не труднее, чем приспособиться к чтению журнала начала XX века.
The "kirillicheskaya pechat'" — the Church Slavonic script used for printing liturgical books and some prayerbooks — can intimidate newcomers. Most people find it more convenient to start their journey in prayer using the "civilian" script, but we would like to assure our readers that the Church Slavonic script is actually more convenient, and mastering it is not at all difficult!
It is more convenient for several reasons. First, the letters are usually larger and stand out more clearly, making it easier to distinguish them — this is very important for many people. Second (if it is a genuine Church Slavonic script, not some stylized version used even in advertisements!), all words carry their accents — which is extremely important for someone who knows the language poorly! In most "civilian" publications, accents are placed only in certain words, at best in all words with more than one syllable. This means that in phrases like "all my hope," "only my tears," and "multitude of stars," you might likely read "all" (instead of "all"), "my" (instead of "my"), "tears" (instead of "tears"), "stars" (instead of "stars"), even though you know that the Church Slavonic language has no "yo." Third, and most importantly, but difficult to prove — this Church Slavonic script is much better suited for the prayerful disposition of the soul; it sets one's mind more easily on such matters. Anyone who overcomes their fear of the "unclear letters" and tries reading them will soon notice.
Almost all peculiarities of the Church Slavonic script can be mastered without special help, simply by starting to read. The outlines of most letters are familiar, while unfamiliar ones can be figured out from context (for example, understanding that "OU" at the beginning of a word should be read as "u"). In this script, there are many overline marks; some of them can be disregarded (these so-called diacritics had meaning in Greek but do not convey any sound in Slavonic: small curved hooks pointing downwards); others are very important and useful: accents (which come in three forms: oblique strokes sloping to the right or left, or more horizontal, less curved hooks pointing downwards) and titlo — signs of abbreviation placed above a word. Words written under a titlo should simply be memorized; there aren't many of them. Always abbreviated and under a titlo are words like "Bog" (God), all its derivatives, "Iisus," "Vladiky," "Gospodi," "Otche," "Troitsa," and other words related to the Divine, as well as such words as "Tserkov'" (Church), "Angel" (Angel), "Evangelie" (Gospel) and others.
The Church Slavonic punctuation marks partly coincide with our own (period, comma, exclamation point), while partly differ (a colon here can coincide with our colon but can also mean a period and comma or an ellipsis; the Church Slavonic question mark resembles our period and comma).