I love typography at large: do you know that accents appeared in 1740 in french?

Feb. 3rd, 2009 23:19 by Stéphane de LucaPermalink | TrackBack: https://stephanedeluca.com/trackback/860 — exists for 15 years & a month ago

If you ever wondered when accents appeared in french... l'Académie française used the accents for the first time in 1740 with the 3rd edition of the dictionary:

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.

Letters J and V were introduced a 22 years before in 1718 with the 2nd edition of the dictionary in order to clarify the pronunciation of words that were respectively composed with letters I and U.

Long s -- i.e. the glyph ſ -- disappeared from french in 1780 and was replaced by the s.

All this occurred only 250 years from now.



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