The prescriptive approach has been prevalent in discussions about the linguistic norm for many decades. Many linguists question the primacy of social custom and make many arbitrary changes to establish the subjective form of the norm. In connection with the planned The Dictionary of Proper Uses of Languagethe author of the article presents the best structuralist traditions and calls for research on the linguistic norm which is based on descriptive methods. It is necessary to completely break away from all manifestations of arbitrariness and subjectivity in contemporary prescriptive linguistics. The fundamental premise that the linguistic norm is a fact based on usus must be reflected in relevant procedures aimed at analyzing corpora consisting of millions of words. Such an approach will make it possible to establish a model that comprises more than just individual language uses. As far as dictionary definitions are concerned, the most frequent, widespread and thus typical linguistic units should be primarily considered to be normative. Typicality, determined by frequency, as well as textual, social and territorial conditions, is the most important category.