  One of the basic sanity properties of a behavioural semantics is that it
constitutes a congruence with respect to standard process operators. This issue
has been traditionally addressed by the development of rule formats for
transition system specifications that define process algebras. In this paper we
suggest a novel, orthogonal approach. Namely, we focus on a number of process
operators, and for each of them attempt to find the widest possible class of
congruences. To this end, we impose restrictions on sublanguages of
Hennessy-Milner logic, so that a semantics whose modal characterization
satisfies a given criterion is guaranteed to be a congruence with respect to
the operator in question. We investigate action prefix, alternative
composition, two restriction operators, and parallel composition.
