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Guillemets (, also , , ) are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons, 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
Guillaume Le Bé Guillaume Le Bé (; 1525–1598) was a French punchcutter and engraver who specialised in Hebrew typefaces. He was born in Troyes to a notable family of paper merchants and apprenticed to Robert Estienne in Paris. After completing his apprenti ...
(1525–1598), though he did not invent the symbols: they first appear in a 1527 book printed by
Josse Bade __NOTOC__ Jodocus Badius (french: Josse Bade; es, Jodoco del Badia; 1462–1535), also known as , , and , was a pioneer of the printing industry, a renowned grammarian, and a pedagogue. Life Josse Badius was born in the village of Asse (former ...
. 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: guillemot is actually a species of seabird). Adobe acknowledges the error. Likewise, X11 mistakenly uses and to name keys producing the characters.


Shape

Guillemets are smaller than less-than and greater-than signs, which in turn are smaller than angle brackets.


Uses


As quotation marks

Guillemets are used pointing outwards («like this») to indicate speech in these languages and regions: *
Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
* Arabic * Armenian *
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 Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally ** Breton people ** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Ga ...
*
Bulgarian Bulgarian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria * Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group * Bulgarian language, a Slavic language * Bulgarian alphabet * A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria * Bul ...
(rarely used; „...“ is official) *
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
*
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
(
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 ...
and
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 ...
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 communi ...
(usage varies) *
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...
(marked usage; „...“ prevails) * Franco-Provençal *
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
(spaced out by thin spaces « like this », except in Switzerland) * Galician * Greek * Italian * Khmer *
Northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...
Korean (in Southern Korean, " is used) * Kurdish * Latvian (''stūrainās pēdiņas'') * Norwegian * Persian * Portuguese (used mostly in European Portuguese, due to its presence in typical computer keyboards; considered obsolete in Brazilian Portuguese) *
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
; only to indicate a quotation within a quotation * Russian, and some languages of the former Soviet Union using Cyrillic script („...“ is also used for nested quotes and in hand-written text.) * Spanish (uncommon in daily usage, but commonly used in publishing) *
Swiss languages The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian, and Romansh. German, French, and Italian maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation, w ...
*
Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
(dated usage; almost entirely replaced with “...” by late 20th century) * Uyghur *
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
* 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 (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) *
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 communi ...
(very uncommon) *
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
(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 screenwr ...
(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 Serbian may refer to: * someone or something related to Serbia, a country in Southeastern Europe * someone or something related to the Serbs, a South Slavic people * Serbian language * Serbian names See also

* * * Old Serbian (disambiguat ...
(marked usage; „...“ prevails) * Slovak (marked usage; „...“ prevails) * Slovene („...“ and "..." also used) *
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
(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 Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
(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.


UML

Guillemets are used in Unified Modeling Language 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 uses guillemets when creating mail merges. 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 critic ...
character sets. They were at 0xAE and 0xAF (174 and 175) in
CP437 Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacr ...
on the IBM PC, and 0xC7 and 0xC8 in Mac OS Roman, and placed in several of ISO 8859 code pages (namely: -1, -7, -8, -9, -13, -15, -16) at 0xAB and 0xBB (171 and 187). Microsoft added the single guillemets to CP1252 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 contexts.


Keyboard entry

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


See also

* A related pair of symbols, ' angle brackets' (a single chevron), and , is used for another purpose, in mathematics and computing. * Chevron * Keyboard (computing) *
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 ...


References


External links

{{navbox punctuation Punctuation Typographical symbols