Kategoria prasowości i jej wykładniki w osiemnastowiecznych gazetkach rękopiśmiennych Jędrzeja Kitowicza

The communicative and cultural phenomenon of manuscripts of news-sheets (letters–news-sheets, hand-written news-sheets) is outside the mainstream linguistic research although their 18th-century representations could illustrate an important stage of the development of press forms and genres as well as specialisation of the Polish language in functional communication practices. The collection of the news-sheets by Jędrzej Kitowicz of the period 1771–1776 is representative for a correspondence-based unoffi cial circulation of information. Genologically and communicatively profi led analyses of the news-sheets have enabled a description of the main exponents of their press nature, i.e. the manners in which an epistolographic form autonomises and obtains the status of an informative form for which a letter is a mere means of communication. The press nature of the discussed news-sheets is signalised, among others, by a heading, consistent architecture of the content modelled on printed press, measures for objectivising the message and making it a reliable news service (lexical source signals, authenticating ones).