The present article addresses the two contemporary Italian dictionaries of abbreviations Malossini (1999) and Righini (2001) and outlines the position of the Italian abbreviations in some other Italian dictionaries, namely the monolingual Zingarelli (2000) and Garzanti (2021) and bilingual Slovene-Italian (Šlenc 2006) and Italian-Slovene (Šlenc 1997). The aim of the paper is to give an insight into the compilation of the abbreviation dictionary entries in monolingual Italian, bilingual in tandem with the Slovene language and specialised abbreviation dictionaries; highlight the elements present within the dictionary entries; present the deficiencies in compiling and examples of good practice; with the aim of introducing the outcomes in the compilation of the bilingual Italian-Slovene dictionary entries of the Slovene Contemporary Dictionary of Abbreviations.Within the paper we present the composition of the bilingual dictionary entries giving the reader an insight into the elements of the dictionary entry, namely the usage of language and field qualifiers, articulated prepositions, i.e. preposizioni articolate (composed of prepositions and definite articles), official translations and additional descriptions.