French orthography was already (more or less) fixed and, from a phonological point of view, outdated when its lexicography developed in the late 17th century and the Académie française was mandated to establish an "official" prescriptive norm. Still, there was already much debate at the time opposing the tenets of a traditional, etymological orthography, and supporting those of a reformed, phonological transcription of the language.

César-Pierre Richelet chose the latter (reformed) option when he published the first monolingual French dictionary in 1680, but the Académie chose to adhere firmly to tradition in the first edition of its dictionary (1694).

Various other attempts at simplification followed, culminating in the "rectifications" of 6 December 1990. Further, more radical proposals also exist to simplify the existing writing system, but these have failed to gather much interest to date.

Spelling and punctuation before the 16th century was highly erratic, but the introduction of printing in 1470 provoked the need for uniformity.

Several Renaissance humanists (working with publishers) proposed reforms in French orthography, the most famous being Jacques Peletier du Mans who developed a phonemic-based spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550). Peletier continued to use his system in all his published works, but his reform was not followed.

The third (1740) and fourth (1762) editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive, 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.

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