Guillemet

Guillemets may also be called angle, Latin, Castilian, Spanish, or French quotes/quotation marks.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}}

Guillemet is a diminutive of the French name {{lang|fr|Guillaume}}, apparently after the French printer and punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé (1525–1598),{{refn|name="Microsoft-etym"|{{cite web |url=http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/punc.htm |title=Character design standards, Latin 1: Punctuation Design Standards. § Pointing quotation marks – Guillemets |website=Microsoft Typography |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103011454/http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/punc.htm |archive-date=2012-11-03 |access-date=2020-06-12 }}}} though he did not invent the symbols: they first appear in a 1527 book printed by Josse Bade.[http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/guillemet Trésor de la langue française informatisé – guillemet]

In Adobe software, its file format specifications, and in all fonts derived from these that contain the characters, the glyph names are incorrectly spelled {{code|guillemotleft}} and {{code|guillemotright}} (a malapropism: guillemot is actually a species of seabird). Adobe has acknowledged the error.{{Cite book |author=Adobe Systems Inc. |year=1999 |title=PostScript Language Reference: The Red Book |edition=3rd |publisher=Addison Wesley |isbn=978-0-201-37922-8 |at=Character set endnote 3, page 783 |oclc=40927139}} Likewise, X11 mistakenly uses {{code|XK_guillemotleft}} and {{code|XK_guillemotright}} to name keys producing the characters.

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

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File:Guillemets in different fonts with italics.svg Neue, Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria, DejaVu Serif and Courier New with their italics counterparts]]

File:Angle brackets and less+greater signs and half guillemets in different fonts.svgs, less-than/greater-than signs and single guillemets in fonts Cambria, DejaVu Serif, Andron Mega Corpus, Andika and Everson Mono]]

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{{See also|Quotation mark#Summary table}}

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

• Albanian
• Arabic
• Armenian
• Azerbaijani (mostly in the Cyrillic script)
• Belarusian
• Breton
• Bulgarian (rarely used; „...“ is official)
• Catalan
• Chinese (《 and 》 are used to indicate a book or album title)
• Esperanto (usage varies)
• Estonian (marked usage; „...“ prevails)
• Franco-Provençal
• French (spaced out by thin spaces « like this », except no spaces in Switzerland)
• Galician
• Greek
• Italian
• Khmer
• Northern Korean (in Southern Korean, “...” is used)
• Kurdish
• Latvian{{cite web | url=https://www.uzdevumi.lv/p/latviesu-valoda/12-klase/valodas-funkcionalie-stili-11433/lietiskais-stils-11551/re-25a094b0-0a93-41f8-b8df-70f7f71584b0 | title=Pieturzīmes lietišķajos rakstos. Pēdiņas. — teorija. Latviešu valoda, 12. Klase. }} (stūrainās pēdiņas)
• Norwegian
• Persian
• Portuguese (used mostly in European Portuguese, due to its presence in typical computer keyboards; considered obsolete in Brazilian Portuguese)
• Romanian; 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
• 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 (preferred by typographers,{{Cite book |last=Mesaroš |first=Franjo |url=https://archive.org/embed/franjo-mesaros-tipografski-priruc-nik |title=Tipografski priručnik |year=1985 |p=179}} alternate pair „...“ is in common use)
• Czech (traditional but declining usage; „...“ prevails)
• Danish (“...” is also used)
• Esperanto (very uncommon)
• German (guillemets are preferred for books, while „...“ is preferred in newspapers and handwriting; see above for usage in Swiss German)
• Hungarian (only used „inside a section »as a secondary quote« marked by the usual quotes” like this)
• Polish (used to indicate a quote inside a quote as defined by dictionaries; more common usage in practice. See also: Polish orthography)
• Serbian (marked usage; „...“ prevails)
• Slovak (traditional but declining usage; „...“ prevails)
• Slovene („...“ and “...” also used)
• Swedish (this style, and »...» are considered typographically fancy; ”...” is the common form of quotation)

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 considered typographically fancy; ”...” is the common form of quotation)

In Quebec, the right-hand guillemet, {{char|»}}, called a {{lang|fr|guillemet itératif}}, is used as a ditto mark.{{cite web|url = http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=3362 | title = Banque de dépannage linguistique: Guillemets itératifs | publisher= Office québécois de la langue française | language=French | trans-title= Linguistic help desk: Iterative quotes | access-date= 30 December 2019}}

Guillemets are used in Unified Modeling Language to indicate a stereotype of a standard element.

Microsoft Word uses guillemets when creating mail merges. Microsoft use these punctuation marks to denote a mail merge "field", such as {{char|«Title»}}, {{char|«AddressBlock»}} or {{char|«GreetingLine»}}. 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.

Double guillemets are present in many 8-bit extended ASCII 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, 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 codes).

The ISO 8859 locations were inherited by Unicode, which added the single guillemets at new locations:

• {{unichar|00AB|LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK}}
• {{unichar|00BB|RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK}}
• {{unichar|2039|SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK}}
• {{unichar|203A|SINGLE RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK}}

Despite their names, the characters are mirrored when used in right-to-left contexts.

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

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• A related pair of symbols, 'angle brackets' (a single chevron), {{code|⟨}} and {{code|⟩}}, is used for another purpose, in mathematics and computing.
• Chevron
• Computer keyboard
• Quotation mark

{{reflist}}

{{Wiktionary|guillemet}}

{{Commons category|Guillemets}}

{{Languages of France}}

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Category:Punctuation

Category:Typographical symbols