Guillemets (, also , , ) are a pair of

punctuation mark Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. A ...

s in the form of sideways double

chevrons Chevron (often relating to V-shaped patterns) may refer to: Science and technology * Chevron (aerospace), sawtooth patterns on some jet engines * Chevron (anatomy), a bone * '' Eulithis testata'', a moth * Chevron (geology), a fold in rock l ...

, and , used as

quotation mark Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...

s in a number of languages. In some of these languages "single" guillemets, and , are used for a quotation inside another quotation. Guillemets are not conventionally used in the English language.

Terminology

Guillemets may also be called angle, Latin, Castilian, Spanish, or French quotes / quotation marks. ''Guillemet'' is a

diminutive A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A ( abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...

of the French name ', apparently after the French printer and

punchcutter Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould sh ...

Guillaume Le Bé (1525–1598), though he did not invent the symbols: they first appear in a 1527 book printed by Josse Bade. Some languages derive their word for guillemets analogously: In

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

font software, its file format specifications, and in all fonts derived from these that contain the characters, the glyph names are incorrectly spelled and (a

malapropism A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to ...

guillemot Guillemot is the common name for several species of seabird in the Alcidae or auk family (part of the order Charadriiformes). In British use, the term comprises two genera: '' Uria'' and '' Cepphus''. In North America the ''Uria'' species ...

is actually a species of seabird). Adobe acknowledges the error. Likewise,

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

mistakenly uses and to name keys producing the characters.

Shape

Guillemets are smaller than less-than and

greater-than sign The greater-than sign is a mathematical symbol that denotes an inequality between two values. The widely adopted form of two equal-length strokes connecting in an acute angle at the right, , has been found in documents dated as far back as the ...

s, which in turn are smaller than

angle bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

Guillemets in different fonts with italics

Uses

As quotation marks

Guillemets are used pointing outwards («like this») to indicate speech in these languages and regions: * Albanian *

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

Belarusian Belarusian may refer to: * Something of, or related to Belarus * Belarusians, people from Belarus, or of Belarusian descent * A citizen of Belarus, see Demographics of Belarus * Belarusian language * Belarusian culture * Belarusian cuisine * Byelor ...

* Breton * Bulgarian (rarely used; „...“ is official) * Catalan * Chinese ( 《 and 》 are used to indicate a book or album title) *

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international commun ...

(usage varies) * Estonian (marked usage; „...“ prevails) *

Franco-Provençal Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal, Patois or Arpitan) is a language within Gallo-Romance originally spoken in east-central France, western Switzerland and northwestern Italy. Franco-Provençal has several distinct dialects and is sepa ...

* French (spaced out by

thin space In typography, a thin space is a space character whose width is usually or of an em. It is used to add a narrow space, such as between nested quotation marks or to separate glyphs that interfere with one another. It is not as narrow as the hai ...

s « like this », except in Switzerland) * Galician *

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...

* Khmer * Northern

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language * ...

(in Southern Korean, " is used) * Kurdish * Latvian (''stūrainās pēdiņas'') * Norwegian *

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

* Portuguese (used mostly in

European Portuguese European Portuguese ( pt, português europeu, ), also known as Portuguese of Portugal (Portuguese: português de Portugal), Iberian Portuguese (Portuguese: português ibérico), and Peninsular Portuguese (Portuguese: português peninsular), refer ...

, due to its presence in typical computer keyboards; considered obsolete in Brazilian Portuguese) * Romanian; only to indicate a quotation within a quotation *

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...

, and some languages of the

former Soviet Union The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...

using Cyrillic script („...“ is also used for nested quotes and in hand-written text.) *

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

(uncommon in daily usage, but commonly used in publishing) * Swiss languages * Turkish (dated usage; almost entirely replaced with “...” by late 20th century) * Uyghur * Ukrainian * Uzbek (mostly in the Cyrillic script) * Vietnamese (previously, now "..." is official) Guillemets are used pointing inwards (»like this«) to indicate speech in these languages: * Croatian (marked usage; „...” prevails) *

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech ...

(marked usage; „...“ prevails) *

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...

("..." is also used) *

(very uncommon) * German (except in Switzerland; here guillemets are preferred for printed matters, whilst „...“ is preferred in handwriting) * Hungarian (only used „inside a section »as a secondary quote« marked by the usual quotes” like this) *

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin scree ...

(used to indicate a quote inside a quote as defined by dictionaries; more common usage in practice. See also:

Polish orthography Polish orthography is the system of writing the Polish language. The language is written using the Polish alphabet, which derives from the Latin alphabet, but includes some additional letters with diacritics. The orthography is mostly phonetic, or ...

) * Serbian (marked usage; „...“ prevails) * Slovak (marked usage; „...“ prevails) * Slovene („...“ and "..." also used) * Swedish (this style, and »...» are rarely used; ”...” is the common and correct form) Guillemets are used pointing right (»like this») to indicate speech in these languages: * Finnish (”...” is the common and correct form) * Swedish (this style and «...» are rarely used; ”...” is the common and correct form)

Ditto mark

In Quebec, the right-hand guillemet, , called a , is used as a

ditto mark The ditto mark is a shorthand sign, used mostly in hand-written text, indicating that the words or figures above it are to be repeated. The mark is made using 'a pair of apostrophes'; 'a pair of marks used underneath a word'; the symbol (quot ...

UML

Guillemets are used in

Unified Modeling Language The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally ...

to indicate a

stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...

of a standard element.

Mail merge

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

uses guillemets when creating

mail merge Mail merge consists of combining mail and letters and pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for mass mailings from a form letter. This feature is usually employed in a word processing document which contains fixed text (which is the same in ea ...

s. Microsoft use these punctuation marks to denote a mail merge "field", such as , or . Then on the final printout, the guillemet-marked tags are replaced by each instance of the corresponding data item intended for that field by the user.

Encoding

Double guillemets are present in many 8-bit

extended ASCII Extended ASCII is a repertoire of character encodings that include (most of) the original 96 ASCII character set, plus up to 128 additional characters. There is no formal definition of "extended ASCII", and even use of the term is sometimes criti ...

character sets. They were at 0xAE and 0xAF (174 and 175) in CP437 on the IBM PC, and 0xC7 and 0xC8 in

Mac OS Roman Mac OS Roman is a character encoding created by Apple Computer, Inc. for use by Macintosh computers. It is suitable for representing text in English and several other Western languages. Mac OS Roman encodes 256 characters, the first 128 of whic ...

, and placed in several of

ISO 8859 ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12 ...

code pages (namely: -1, -7, -8, -9, -13, -15, -16) at 0xAB and 0xBB (171 and 187). Microsoft added the single guillemets to

CP1252 Windows-1252 or CP-1252 (code page 1252) is a single-byte character encoding of the Latin alphabet, used by default in the legacy components of Microsoft Windows for English and many European languages including Spanish, French, and German. It i ...

and similar sets used in Windows at 0x8B and 0x9B (139 and 155) (where the ISO standard placed

C1 control code The C0 and C1 control code or control character sets define control codes for use in text by computer systems that use ASCII and derivatives of ASCII. The codes represent additional information about the text, such as the position of a cursor, ...

s). The ISO 8859 locations were inherited by Unicode, which added the single guillemets at new locations: * * * * Despite their names, the characters are mirrored when used in

right-to-left In a script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL, RL-TB or R2L), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmir ...

contexts.

Keyboard entry

The double guillemets are standard keys on AZERTY and French Canadian QWERTY keyboards and some others.

References

External links

{{navbox punctuation Punctuation Typographical symbols