Based on the Charter of the Navy of 1797, the article traces the features of the formation of regulatory business documents in the Russian language of the 18th century. The text under study is considered as a regulatory document, which is less categorical than other prescriptive documents. Such means of expressing imperativeness as infinitives, personal verbal forms, constructions with modal operators are revealed. The special role of the verb to try in the transmission of imperative semantics is noted. When compared with an earlier document, the Naval Charter of 1720, the dynamics of the development of imperative expressions in the language of the 18th century is established.