What Is the Abbreviation for Suite?

August 16, 2020

Are you wondering what the abbreviation of the word “suite” is? You have come to the right places. In this article, we will explain the not one, but two abbreviations for the word “suite.”

Table of Contents

Definition of Suite

When it comes to the word suite there are far more definitions than you’d assume at first glance, however as we go through them the common thread between all of them will ideally become apparent.

The first definition we have for suite reads:

A set of connected rooms, more often than not in a hotel.

However, a suite can as well refer to any of the following:

A complete set of furniture that has to be kept together.
A group of followers of attendants in the service of another person
An ordered series of dances or instrument performances in a larger musical composition (such as “The Nutcracker Suite” or “Bach Cello Suites”)

As such the common element regardless of the context is the idea of various items or events that form a single set. A suite is first and foremost a group of elements, and what kind of suite people are referring to can vary wildly based on the context. Nonetheless in common usage chances are you’ll come across suite to refer to the room meaning.

How Do You Abbreviate Suite

In English, there are two abbreviations for the word “suite” which are:

Ste.
STE

There’s no other difference besides capitalization and in fact that “Ste” can be written without the period, so it’s really important to keep the capitalization in mind. After all, unlike most abbreviations, “Ste.” and “STE” are to be used in different contexts since they are not interchangeable.

Synonyms for Suite

The main synonyms for suite while trying to keep the general meaning are: Collection, Set, Batch, Array, Group and Series.

Many more synonyms pop up if you are looking for one of the specific uses of suite, such as: Composition, Network, Apartment and Retinue.

However, for the latter, most of those synonyms only apply to a single use of the word, so context becomes even more important than usual.

When to Use the Abbreviations

Suite abbreviation is interesting because it’s one of those few key cases where multiple abbreviations do in fact lead to different uses. STE and Ste. are in fact not interchangeable so it’s important to always keep that in mind.

Starting with STE we find that it’s an abbreviation that exclusively refers to suite in the context of an apartment or residence. And perhaps more importantly it’s only used when it comes to addresses in particular. STE is the proper abbreviation to use when writing postal addresses and filling out package forms, but only on those cases, and outside of them using that abbreviation is considered inaccurate.

As such Ste. is the main way to abbreviate suite most of the time that can be used whenever we want to abbreviate the word, not just addresses. As such the general rules of abbreviation apply for it. You should only use Ste. when brevity is a requirement, such as newspaper headers, presentation cards, musical compositions, and long reports. Ste. is not meant to be used in regular prose and generally, will be seen as a grammatical error to do so.