Guillemets ( /ˈɡɪləmɛt/, or /ɡiːəˈmeɪ/ from the French [ɡijmɛ]), also called angle quotes, are line segments, pointed as if arrows (« or »), sometimes forming a complementary set of punctuation marks used as a form of quotation mark.
The symbol at either end – double « and » or single ‹ and › – is a guillemet. They are used in a number of languages to indicate speech. They resemble (but are not the same as) the symbols for lesser than, greater than (for the single <), and for left and right bit shifts in some programming languages,[1][2] as well as rewind and fast forward on various media players, such as VCRs, DVD players and MP3 players.
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The word is a diminutive of the French name Guillaume (the equivalent of which in English is William), after the French printer and punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé (1525–1598).[3][4] Some languages derive their word for guillemets analogously; for example, the Irish term is Liamóg, from Liam 'William' and a diminutive suffix.
Used pointing outwards («like this») to indicate speech in these languages and regions:
Used pointing inwards (»like this«) to indicate speech in these languages:
Used pointing right (»like this») to indicate speech in these languages:
A guillemet is sometimes used to indicate direction, for example:
The Perl 6 programming language uses « » and < > to combine quoting and subscripting. %table<name> has the same meaning as %table{'name'}, and %table«name» has the same meaning as %table{"name"}.
In the RPL programming language, guillemets are used to demarcate the beginning and end of a program block.
Guillemets are often used on buttons that enable forward and backward navigation across a set of items (for example in VB, MS Access, email clients, article comment sections, etc). Often a guillemet signifies navigation to the first («) or last (») item in a list, while a corresponding single angle (not actually a guillemet) signifies navigation to the previous (<) or next (>) item.
Windows users can create the guillemet "«" by holding Alt + 0171 or Alt + 7598 or Alt + 174 or Alt + 686 and "»" by holding Alt + 0187 or Alt + 7599 or Alt + 175 or Alt + 687. With a US International Keyboard Alt Gr + [ and Alt Gr + ] can also be used. The characters are standard on French Canadian keyboards and some others.
Macintosh users can type "«" as Option-Backslash and "»" as Option-Shift-Backslash. (This applies to all English-language keyboard layouts supplied with the operating system, e.g. "Australian", "British", "Canadian", "Irish", "Irish Extended", "U.S." and "U.S. Extended". Other language layouts may differ.)
For users of Unix-like operating systems running the X Window System, creation of the guillemet depends on a number of factors including the keyboard layout that is in effect. For example, with US International Keyboard layout selected a user would type Alt Gr + [ for "«" and Alt Gr + "]" for "»". On some configurations they can be written by typing "«" as Alt Gr + z and "»" as Alt Gr + x. With the compose key, press Compose + < + < and Compose + > + >. Additionally with the ibus input method framework enabled, users may enter these characters into those applications that accept it by using Ctrl + Shift + U followed by their unicode codepoints: either AB or BB, respectively.
On computers, operating systems, or keyboards without support for guillemets, these characters are sometimes produced with double inequality characters (<< or >>) or double chevrons (〈〈 or 〉〉).
In Unicode, the characters are encoded at U+00AB « left-pointing double angle quotation mark (HTML: « «) and at U+00BB » right-pointing double angle quotation mark (HTML: » »). Despite their names, the characters are mirrored when used in right-to-left contexts.
Guillemets are used in Unified Modeling Language to indicate a stereotype of a standard element.
Gmail offers an orange guillemet as an optional star that can be applied to messages.[5] Gmail also uses single and double angles to denote messages sent directly to the recipient, although it calls them arrows rather than guillemets.[6]
Microsoft Word uses guillemets when creating mail merges. Microsoft use these punctuation marks to denote a mail merge "field", such as «Title», «AddressBlock» or «GreetingLine». Then on the final printout, the guillemet-marked tags are replaced by the corresponding data outlined for that field by the user.
In Adobe Systems font software, its file format specifications, and in all fonts derived from these that contain the characters, the word is incorrectly spelled ‘guillemot’ (a malapropism: guillemot is actually a species of seabird) in the names of the two glyphs: guillemotleft and guillemotright. Adobe acknowledges the error.[7]
Likewise, X11 mistakenly calls them ‘XK_guillemotleft’ and ‘XK_guillemotright’ in the file keysymdef.h.