Guillemet

Key takeaways

Guillemet belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Guillemet to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Guillemet from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Guillemets are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons, « and », sometimes used as quotation marks or ditto marks. When used as quotation marks, single guillemets, ‹ and ›, are used for nested quotations. Guillemets are not conventionally used in English.

Terminology Guillemets are also called French quotes, French quotation marks, angle quotation marks, or duckfoot quotes. Guillemet is a diminutive of the French name Guillaume, apparently after the French printer and punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé (1525–1598), though he did not invent the symbols: they first appear in a 1527 book printed by Josse Bade. Both Adobe PostScript and the X Window System misspelled the symbol as "guillemot" (a type of seabird) and wrote these misspellings into symbols used in computer file formats so they cannot be fixed.

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

Use as quotation marks

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

Albanian Arabic Armenian Asturian Azerbaijani (mostly in the Cyrillic script) Belarusian Breton Bulgarian (used before 1990, now rarely used; „...“ is official) Catalan Chinese (only used for book titles, movie titles, magazine titles, etc.) 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 (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, 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)

Encoding 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).

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

U+00AB « LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK («) U+00BB » RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK (») U+2039 ‹ SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK (&lsaquo;) U+203A › SINGLE RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK (&rsaquo;) Despite their names, the characters are mirrored when used in right-to-left contexts.

See also Similar-looking punctuation marks: Angle brackets, ⟨ and ⟩, are a type of brackets that are mainly used in specialist settings, such as mathematics and linguistics Title marks, typically 《 and 》 but also 〈 and 〉, are used in Chinese to denote the name of a book, film, newspaper, and other types of works Chevron – V-shaped or inverted-V-shaped symbol (as an insignia) Unicode input – Input characters using their Unicode code points

Notes

References

External links

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Guillemet

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Guillemet claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Guillemet before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Guillemet ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Guillemet

In research: Guillemet appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Guillemet in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Guillemet is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Punctuation, Typographical symbols, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Guillemet outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Guillemet in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Guillemet means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Guillemet out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Guillemet in simple terms?

Guillemets are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons, « and », sometimes used as quotation marks or ditto marks. When used as quotation marks, single guillemets, ‹ and ›, are used for nested quotations.

Why does Guillemet matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Guillemet?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Guillemet.