What « means
It marks a quotation; the language determines which end. French uses « quoted words », with spaces inside. Spanish guidance recommends angle quotes—called comillas angulares in Spanish—for the outer quotation when quotes contain other quotes: «quoted words».
Treat the marks as punctuation around someone’s words, not arrows pointing at them.
German angle quotes can run the other way
In the German inward-pointing convention, write »quoted words«: » opens and « closes. That is not a backwards French quotation. Follow the document’s convention rather than swapping marks based on their names.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
5
<< Two separate less-than characters. Use the actual guillemet for quotation punctuation, not this visual imitation.
Related characters
2
Combination ideas
5Questions people ask
2Why is there a space inside French guillemets?
It is a French typesetting convention. Use non-breaking spaces to keep an opening mark from sitting alone at a line’s end, or a closing mark at the next line’s start.
Should I use « » in English?
Usually not. Follow your English publication’s quotation style; a French speaker’s words do not automatically need French quotation marks.
More like this
14
❝Heavy Double Turned Comma Quotation Mark Ornament
❞Heavy Double Comma Quotation Mark Ornament
❯Heavy Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark Ornament
〈Left-Pointing Angle Bracket
〉Right-Pointing Angle Bracket
🇫🇷Flag: France
¨DiaeresisªFeminine Ordinal Indicator
¬Not Sign
»Right-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark
〈Left Angle Bracket
〉Right Angle Bracket
!Exclamation Mark
"Quotation MarkCollections with «
10
How to type or find «
- Also called
- opening angle quote · French quote mark
- Search it as
- guillemet · guillemets · French quotes · angle quotes · comillas · laquo
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
«\00ABCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.