Reforms of French Orthography - 18th Century

18th Century

L'Académie s'eſt donc vûe contrainte à faire dans cette nouvelle Edition, à ſon orthographe, pluſieurs changemens qu'elle n'avoit point jugé à propos d'adopter, lorſqu'elle donna l'Edition précédente. — Académie, 1740, using accents for the first time

The third (1740) and fourth (1762) editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive ones, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether.

Accents, which had been in common use by printers for a long time, were finally adopted by the Académie, and many mute consonants were dropped.

estre → être (to be)

monachal → monacal (monastic)

Many changes suggested in the fourth edition were later abandoned along with thousands of neologisms added to it.

Very importantly too, subsequent 18th century editions of the dictionary added the letters J and V to the French alphabet in replacement of consonant I and U, fixing many cases of homography.

uil → vil (vile)