Svenska Akademiens ordlista

Traditionally it carries the motto of the Swedish Academy, Snille och Smak ("Talent and Taste"), on its blue cloth cover.

In 1801 the Academy published an official orthography (Carl Gustaf af Leopold, Afhandling om svenska stafsättet, 266 pages).

A similar reform movement for Danish, which at this time was the written language also in Norway, was led by Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) and his follower Niels Matthias Petersen (1791–1862).

The Academy was not pleased, and as a countermeasure Johan Erik Rydqvist (1800–1877) published the first edition of SAOL in 1874, based on the orthography in Leopold's work of 1801.

To further reform, a Swedish orthographic society (Svenska rättstavningssällskapet) was formed on November 28, 1885, chaired by linguist Adolf Noreen (1854–1925), and published a journal Nystavaren.

In 1903, the association of Swedish public school teachers (Sveriges allmänna folkskollärarförening) requested a government ruling that it "would no longer be considered wrong" (ej måtte betraktas som fel) to write TT instead of DT and V instead of F, FV and HV.

A government proposal to this effect was signed on April 7, 1906, by education minister Fridtjuv Berg (1851–1916), and put before the parliament of 1907.

Sweden's largest printed encyclopedia of all times, the 2nd edition of Nordisk familjebok was started in 1904 and used the old spelling through all 38 volumes until 1926.

In the 10th edition in 1973, the Academy tried to launch new alternative spellings such as jos ("juice"), without attracting any significant number of followers.

From the beginning of times, W had in Swedish been considered as a mere decoration of V. In Swedish typography, blackletter (fraktur) used W where antiqua used V. With orthographic standardization and spelling reform, W was abandoned except for some proper names and a few loan words such as whisky, wobbler (also spelled visky and vobbler), whist and wienerbröd.