French orthography was already (more or less) fixed and, from a phonological point of view, outdated when its lexicography developed in the late 17th century and the Académie française was mandated to establish an "official" prescriptive norm.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.
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).
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.
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.
With important dictionaries published at the turn of the 20th century, such as those of Émile Littré, Pierre Larousse, Arsène Darmesteter, and later Paul Robert, the Académie gradually lost much of its prestige.
The council, with the help of some Académie members and observers from Francophone states, published reforms that it called "rectifications orthographiques" on 6 December 1990.
This applies also when those verbs are nominalized using the suffix -ement: Notwithstanding the normal rules (see French verbs), the past participle laissé followed by an infinitive never agrees with the object: This is an alleged simplification of the rules governing the agreement as applied to a past participle followed by an infinitive.
This rule was also extended to suffixes in two cases, actually changing them into totally different morphemes altogether: Isolated words were adjusted to follow older reform where they had been omitted: Lastly, some words have simply seen their spelling simplified, or fixed when it was uncertain: These "rectifications" were supposed to be applied as of 1991 but, following a period of agitation and the publication of many books such as the Union of copy editors' attacking new rules one by one, André Goosse's defending them, or Josette Rey-Debove's accepting a few (that have been added, as alternative spellings, to Le Robert), they appeared to have become, for a while, dead proposals.
Officially, French people, including public workers, are free for an undetermined length of time to continue using the old spelling.
On 3 February 2016, a report by French television channel TF1[5] that the reforms would be applied from the next school year caused wide outrage.