16th century printers introduced accents to shorten French words so they could save on paper and ink.
Printers sought concise forms as a means of cost reduction.
In the 1530s Geoffroy Tory, France's royal printer, became famous for his work in systematizing the French language.
In his book, Champfleury, he promoted the use of accents and the apostrophe.
Keeping costs in mind, he also worked to replace Gothic characters with roman letters, which were more compact, using up less space on the printed page.
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