The notion of "good usage" immediately evokes in the French context the names of Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1650) and Maurice Grevisse (1895-1980), two giants in the codification of modern French which dates from the seventeenth century. This concept, imbued today with elitist connotations, is often perceived as a collection of normative prescriptions which correspond to a certain sociocultural model. The move from "usage" to “good usage” seems to imply a transition from a descriptive to a prescriptive model, from an objective norm based on a statistically dominant usage to a prescriptive norm. The aim of this volume is to examine through a number of case studies whether the establishment of good usage necessarily results in a reduction of variants. The volume constitutes a first attempt to determine how far “good usage” is a typically French concept and to what extent the same ideas, terms and models can be found in other national traditions.