The central problem of this article is connected with work on the Grammatical Dictionary of Polish, published electronically in 2007 by Z. Saloni, W. Gruszczyński, M. Woliński, and R. Wołosz. In the published version of the dictionary among ca. 180 000 entries there were 1,117 abbreviations, which are strings of letters created by omitting some part of the written expressions; they function only in the written texts. (Abbreviations are distinct from acronyms, which are real lexemes created from abbreviations and used both in written and spoken texts.) However the method for including abbreviations in the dictionary did not satisfy the authors. The aim of the article is to analyze the use of abbreviations in contemporary Polish texts. The real problem of abbreviations in Polish is connected with the inflection of nouns and complex nominal phrases (including also subordinates to the head of the phrase). As a result of inflection, a given abbreviation can be decoded (interpreted orally) in more than one way, e.g.: prof. Nowak ‘profesor Nowak’ (Nominative), z prof. Nowakiem ‘z profesorem Nowakiem’ (Instrumental). Polish spelling handbooks attempt to codify minutely methods for abbreviating Polish words and expressions, although the majority of abbreviations are shortlived and it therefore does not make sense to unify and standardize them. There are some dozens (or hundreds) of stable and frequently used Polish abbreviations (which as a rule have not been included in Polish explanatory dictionaries). In the conclusion some rules for selecting such abbreviations for the new revised version of the Grammatical Dictionary of Polish are discussed and formulated.