Abbreviations and Acronyms

Open any Swedish newspaper, email, or instruction sheet and you immediately hit a wall of dots-and-letters: t.ex., dvs, bl.a., m.m., osv., fr.o.m. These are not optional flourishes — they are the standard, everywhere-present shorthand of written Swedish, and a reader who cannot decode them will stumble through every formal text. Just as importantly, Swedish has its own set: you write t.ex., not the Latin e.g., and dvs, not i.e. Importing the English/Latin abbreviations marks your text as foreign. This page decodes the everyday abbreviations, shows what they expand to and how they are read aloud (you say the full phrase, not the letters), and covers the most common acronyms a learner meets.

The core written abbreviations

These are the ones you will meet constantly. Learn the expansion, because when you read the text aloud you say the full words, never the letters: t.ex. is pronounced till exempel, not "tee-ex."

A note on the dots — and on dvs / bl a

Swedish abbreviation punctuation has loosened over the decades. The traditional spelling puts a period after each shortened part (d.v.s., bl.a.), but modern style — and especially the recommendations behind Svenska skrivregler — increasingly favours dropping the dots on the most frozen ones: dvs, bla / bl a, osv without internal periods is now common and accepted. You will see both. t.ex. keeps its dots in most writing; ca and mvh are normally dotless. The safe reading strategy is simply to recognise the cluster of letters regardless of how the dots fall.

t.o.m. has a second life as "even"

Watch out for t.o.m.: besides "up to and including" (sidorna 5 t.o.m. 9, "pages 5 through 9"), the same letters spell the adverb till och med in its other sense — "even." Context tells them apart: between two endpoints it is the range marker; in front of a single surprising element it means "even."

A text dense with abbreviations, decoded

Formal Swedish — notices, official letters, instructions — can pack several abbreviations into one sentence. Here is a realistic example you might find pinned to a noticeboard, with the full reading underneath:

Notice that mvh belongs to a specific register slot — the sign-off of an email or letter, the Swedish equivalent of "Best regards." It is informal-to-neutral; a more formal letter ends with the full Med vänliga hälsningar spelled out, or the very formal Högaktningsfullt.

Reading acronyms

True acronyms (read as their letters or as a word) are a smaller set but you meet them daily. Some are pronounced letter by letter, some as a word:

• SVT = Sveriges Television (the public broadcaster) — read "ess-veh-teh."
• SAOL = Svenska Akademiens ordlista (the standard word list / spelling authority) — read as a word, "saa-ol."
• T-bana / tunnelbana = the metro/subway; T-bana (the "T" from tunnel) is the everyday clipped form — read "teh-bana."
• SJ = Statens Järnvägar (the railway operator) — "ess-jii."
• moms = mervärdesskatt (VAT) — read as a word, "moms."
• pers. / kr = "per person" / kronor (the currency).

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Swedish has its own abbreviation set — use t.ex. (e.g.), dvs (i.e.), bl.a. (among others), m.m./osv. (etc.) — never the imported e.g./i.e./etc.
• Read abbreviations aloud as the full phrase: t.ex. → till exempel, kl. 9 → klockan nio. The letters are never spoken.
• fr.o.m. / t.o.m. = "from / up to (and including)"; t.o.m. also means "even" before a single surprising item.
• Modern style often drops internal dots on frozen abbreviations (dvs, bla, osv) — recognise them either way.
• mvh = med vänliga hälsningar, the email/letter sign-off; acronyms like SVT, SAOL, T-bana, moms are part of everyday reading.