The sixth international colloquium on »French in Canada - French in France« is part of the ongoing, triennial series of scholarly conventions devoted to the linguistic links existing between Canada and France. Some 30 experts on French dialectology, lexicology, and lexicography assembled at Orford (Quebec) in September 2000 to discuss the various aspects of the keynote topic at the meeting: Toward a better lexicographic description of variation in French: the contribution made by linguistic inquiries, textual data banks, and other corpora.