Estonian (Estonia) style guide

Write natural Estonian with the house voice and the product's terminology. Use the current EKI teatmik and Sõnaveeb for grammar, spelling and word forms. The shared localization review covers factual accuracy, accessibility and testing.

Address and meaning

Use the teie form consistently in house documentation: Avage fail., Valige kaust., Kas soovite jätkata? The verb often makes a separate teie unnecessary. Keep the pronoun when it identifies an owner or distinguishes people. Lowercase teie is the default here. A deliberate sina voice is possible for another surface; it is not reserved for two named suppliers' products.

Use meie only when the organization actually performs the action. Name the application when it is responsible, or use an impersonal construction when its identity does not matter. Do not invent a team behind every system response or erase a known actor simply to avoid we.

Preserve what the source establishes. A product key that did not work is not necessarily incorrect. Tootevõtme kasutamine nurjus. reports the failure; it does not diagnose the key. Keep tootevõti distinct from a product number. Restarting an installer and restarting the operating system are also different actions.

Keep conditions and scope. A warning about the reader and other users losing unsaved work must retain both groups and the possibility of loss. Invalid and missing properties require different repairs. Preserve whether sharing location, account or domain data is optional and exactly which information is used. Do not turn a claimed sender indicator into a guarantee that an email is safe.

Choose familiar words, such as teave, muutma and kiirklahv, when they express the required concept. A technical process can need protsess; it is not always a toiming. A mobile device is not necessarily a telefon. Avoid universal suffix bans and short-word substitutions that change the object, action or technical meaning. Consult the current dictionary for accepted forms instead of copying an old preference list.

Adapt an idiom's meaning and tone without adding promises. Keep real names, quantities and currencies. Use clearly fictional sample people and organizations where appropriate, and omit supplier campaigns and unverified cultural generalizations.

People and ownership

Estonian tema/ta does not specify gender and can refer to one person where English uses singular they. Nemad/nad refers to several people. Select the form and case for the real referent; do not change one administrator into a group. Keep the owner distinct from the person performing an action.

Use an accurate role name, such as kasutaja, asjatundja or müügiesindaja. A chair, speaker and manager are not interchangeable titles. A sports team can require a distinction that an indiscriminate replacement would erase. Inclusion edits must retain permissions, responsibilities and factual identity.

Mention a disability only when relevant and use an accurate, respectful description. Do not replace every nägemispuudega inimene with a term limited to partial sight, or assume that a broad phrase about special needs says the same thing. Respect the individual's preference and the task's actual accessibility requirements.

Cases, agreement and counts

Estonian nouns change in case and number, sometimes with changes to the stem. An adjective usually agrees with its noun, but copying the same ending onto every word is unsafe.

Form	Example
Singular nominative	uus fail
Singular genitive	uue faili
Singular partitive	uut faili
Plural nominative	uued failid
Plural genitive	uute failide
Plural partitive	uusi faile
With a new file	uue failiga
One file	1 fail
Two files	2 faili

In the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative cases, an ordinary adjective stays in the genitive form: uue failiga. Participles and indeclinable adjectives have further exceptions. Consult EKI's agreement guidance and the dictionary instead of applying the regular pattern universally.

The digital noun fail has singular fail, faili, faili and plural failid, failide, faile or failisid. The count 2 faili uses the singular partitive, not the ordinary plural failid. Other constructions require their own cases. Test zero, one, several, large values and supported fractions in complete messages; do not assume a number leaves the following noun unchanged.

Object case depends on the verb, negation, completeness and sentence construction. Compare Valige fail., Valisite faili. and Ärge valige faili. These do not justify treating every form of choose as requiring the same case. EKI discusses object constructions, including imperatives and their exceptions.

Keep location, movement and source distinct: kaustas, kausta and kaustast can express in, into and from a folder. Check the governing verb and any preposition or postposition. Do not mechanically copy English word order or use a compact suffix algorithm as a substitute for dictionary forms.

Names, labels and variables

Keep an existing control's exact text. A descriptor can carry the required case: Klõpsake nuppu Salvesta. and Valige nupp Salvesta. preserve Salvesta while changing the form of nupp. Identify the actual control first: suvand means an option, not every button. A descriptor is useful when it clarifies the noun or protects a label; it is not mandatory in every possible reference.

For a known filename token, Faili „{filename}“ ei saa avada. inflects the descriptor and leaves the value intact. Do not attach an assumed case ending to an arbitrary token. A value that can represent several object types needs a suitable complete phrase or real variants. Test the longest values, punctuation and narrow layouts. Keep tokens, escapes, markup and filenames exact; their meaning comes from the actual formatter. Follow messages and variables.

Inflect ordinary names according to their pronunciation and Estonian usage. An apostrophe can separate a foreign name from an ending when spelling and pronunciation conflict: Jane’ile. Do not add one to every name or remove a required one because a translation tool makes it inconvenient. See EKI on foreign names. Use a descriptive construction when inflecting the name would obscure its identity.

Compounds and abbreviations

Write established compounds together: tööriistariba, kasutajakonto. A compound and an ordinary phrase can have different meanings. Use a hyphen where required, as in PDF-fail, USB-port and DNS-server. Do not build long compounds merely to imitate the English structure.

Use familiar abbreviations sparingly: nt, jne and lk are useful in suitable contexts. Explain an unfamiliar initialism when the reader needs it; preserve established localized or international forms rather than inventing new ones. An abbreviation's punctuation and inflection depend on its type. See EKI on abbreviation inflection.

Keep technical case and units exact: kbit/s and kB/s are different quantities. A shorter expression must retain the same object and action. If a label does not fit, rephrase it and test the layout before resorting to opaque truncations or changing a device into a phone.

Instructions and message states

Use the chosen form of address in procedural verbs. Topic headings can use action nouns, such as Faili salvestamine; an instruction uses Salvestage fail. A short sentence with an imperative is still a sentence. Keep literal controls, including a button labeled Salvesta, unchanged.

State	Example
Command	Salvestage fail.
In progress	Faili salvestamine on pooleli.
Complete	Fail on salvestatud.
Past failure	Faili ei saanud salvestada.
Current limitation	Faili ei saa salvestada.

Keep search failures distinct too: Faili ei leitud. reports a past failure; Faili ei leia. describes a current inability to find it. Do not standardize different tenses into one message. Add a known cause and useful recovery, without diagnosing an unknown cause or promising a successful retry.

Use pole or ei ole as the sentence requires; the shorter form is not mandatory everywhere. Teenus pole praegu saadaval. retains the current-time qualification. Mälu and kettaruum are different resources; do not let a generic word for space hide which is insufficient. Preserve a warning's trigger, affected people and consequences. Follow interface feedback.

Put steps in the order of action. A purpose phrase can help, but it must not hide a necessary condition or turn a required step into a suggestion. Keep the actor visible when it helps explain responsibility; use impersonal wording when that is the natural construction.

Capitalization and punctuation

Use sentence case for new headings and controls. Keep language names, months, weekdays and generic job titles lowercase. Preserve the exact spelling and case of product names and existing labels. Uppercase text retains Estonian letters: ÕÄÖÜ, TÕSTUKLAHV. Do not uppercase every word of a trademark by assumption.

Use „…“ for typographic quotations: opening U+201E, closing U+201C. The closing character is “, not ”. Keep literal straight quotes in code. Use house formatting for control references, or quotations when formatting is unavailable and the reference needs separation. See EKI on quotation marks.

A colon can introduce a list whose items are complete sentences. Its introduction and items determine punctuation and capitals; there is no blanket ban on capitals or full-sentence lists after a colon. Keep each item grammatically compatible with the introduction and consistent with its neighbors. EKI's list guidance gives both colon and full-stop constructions.

Use clause punctuation, not copied English pauses: Kui fail on salvestatud, võite akna sulgeda. Parentheses stay close to their contents. Complete sentences take appropriate end punctuation; new labels usually do not need a full stop. Keep punctuation that belongs to an existing label, including an ellipsis.

Prefer a colon to a parenthetical dash. Space an en dash used for an aside; a simple range is unspaced, as in 3–6. A range with a spaced expression on either side can need surrounding spaces: 5000 – 10 000. Use a mathematical minus for negative numbers and calculations. Do not infer a punctuation character from an old keyboard shortcut table.

Numbers and spacing

Use a decimal comma: 12,5, 0,5. Group large numbers with spaces: 10 250,75. Keep a nonbreaking space between a value and its unit or currency where they should stay together: 12,5 mm, 1 250 €, −18 °C. Preserve exact formats for versions, codes, years and machine input; 1.2.0 is a version string.

Ordinary Estonian writes the percent sign next to the number: 50%, 3,5%. Technical fields with an established spaced convention may retain it; do not call that convention universally incorrect. This differs from Finnish. See EKI on percent signs and spacing.

Keep units, magnitude, currency and the difference between percentages and percentage points. Use numerals for exact interface values and measurements instead of applying a running-text rule to every field. Write an unambiguous date such as 13. september 2026; retain ordinal punctuation and the necessary time zone.

Use ja in ordinary prose, while retaining literal ampersands and other symbols in names, formulas and code. Verify spoken output and line wrapping; neither a symbol ban nor a one-verb sentence limit establishes accessibility.

Keyboard wording and speech

Use key names for the actual platform and layout. Local terms include tõstuklahv, tühikuklahv, sisestusklahv and nooleklahvid. Preserve a visible Enter, Ctrl or other label when needed to identify the key. Verify shortcuts, access keys, focus behavior and numeric-keypad requirements in the product.

Use Valige when selection is input-independent. Keep Klõpsake or a specific gesture when that input is essential to the task. A mnemonic marker or ribbon key-tip syntax belongs to a particular framework; it is not a universal Estonian string format.

Use natural Estonian pronunciation and approved readings of names. Read every character needed to reproduce a URL, command or version, including a meaningful punkt or protocol. Include the protocol when the task requires it. Align narration with the visual action and follow the shared audiovisual guidance.