Editing Grade (climbing) (section)

===French numerical grade===
{{anchor|French numerical grade}}{{anchor|French sport grade|French}}
{{See also|Sport climbing#Grading}}
The French numerical system for free climbing was developed from the UIAA scale in the 1980s but uses Arabic numbers instead of the UIAA scale's Roman numerals, and also uses the letters "a", "b" and "c" and the "+" symbol to give additional refinement between the numbers (whereas the UIAA uses only the "−" and "+" symbols).<ref name=CAI/>  The French system starts at 1 and closely aligns with the UIAA scale up to UIAA V+, which is French grade 5a, but thereafter begins to diverge.<ref name=CAI/><ref name=Rockfax/> The French grading system is the dominant system in Europe, and it and the American YDS system are the most dominant systems worldwide; beyond the easiest grades, the two systems can be almost exactly aligned in [[#Comparison tables|comparison tables]].<ref name=CAI/><ref name=Rockfax/>

The French system is an open-ended scale that was at 9c in 2023 with ''[[Silence (climb)|Silence]]''.  The system is only focused on the technical demands of the hardest movement on the route.<ref name=CAI/> Unlike the American YDS system, there is no allowance for any risks in the route, and thus the French system is more closely aligned with [[sport climbing]] (i.e. where [[bolt (climbing)|pre-bolted]] protection removes some risk).<ref name=CAI/>  It is less common to find [[traditional climbing]] routes graded by the French system, and thus it is also called the '''French sport grade'''.<ref name=CAI/> To avoid confusion between French grades and the British E-grades, a lowercase "f" (for French) is used as a prefix (e.g. f6a+); this should not be confused with the use of the capitalized "F" or "fb" prefix in [[#Font grade|Font boulder grades]].<ref name=CAI/>