Guillemet

A quotation mark shaped like a pair of opposing angle brackets. Guillemets mark quoted text in French and several other languages, with spacing and direction varying by convention.

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French punctuation: The conventions governing punctuation in written French. French commonly uses guillemets to enclose quotations, with spaces before and after them.
Angle bracket: A paired punctuation symbol formed from left- or right-pointing chevrons. Guillemets resemble angle brackets but serve as quotation marks rather than mathematical or markup delimiters.
Curly quotation mark: A curved quotation mark used in typographic text to open or close a quotation. Curly quotation marks perform the same quoting function with a different shape.
French language: A Romance language originating in France and spoken worldwide. The word guillemet and the mark’s familiar French use come from French typographic tradition.
Quotation mark: A punctuation mark used to enclose quoted speech, titles, or other text. Guillemets are one regional form within the broader family of quotation marks.
Chevrons: V-shaped or angled marks used as symbols, ornaments, or directional signs. The guillemet’s distinctive shape is a paired, compact chevron.
Straight quotation mark: A vertical or near-vertical mark commonly used for quotations in plain text and programming. Straight marks are a typographically simplified alternative to guillemets.
Guillaume Le Bé: A French type founder and punchcutter active in the sixteenth century. A traditional account links the name guillemet to this printer, though the etymology is disputed.
Quotation marks in French: The conventions for marking quotations in written French. French rules specify guillemet direction, spacing, and alternatives such as paired curly marks.
Unicode: A standard assigning code points to characters used in digital text. Unicode encodes guillemet characters separately from ordinary angle brackets.