Guillemets

Guillemets are the angled quotation marks that look like little arrows: « opening and » closing. They are the standard marks of direct speech and quotation in French, Russian, Italian, Spanish (alongside curly quotes), Portuguese, Greek, Norwegian, and many other languages. English uses them only when quoting foreign passages in their native style, or as a decorative substitute for straight or curly quotes.

The name is a diminutive of the French printer Guillaume — Guillaume Le Bé, a sixteenth-century Parisian type-cutter, is traditionally credited with introducing the marks, though the attribution is affectionate rather than documented. What is clear is that by the eighteenth century they had become the norm in French typography, where they remain.

Two style points confuse English readers. First, in French usage a non-breaking space sits between the guillemet and the enclosed text: « comme ceci ». Second, when a quotation runs to multiple paragraphs, French practice opens each paragraph with a guillemet but does not close them until the very end of the quotation — a convention that surprises English typesetters accustomed to closing every paragraph.

Common mistake in English writing: using guillemets for decorative effect without matching the language's spacing rules. A guillemet in an English paragraph reads as ornament; the spacing gives it away as ornament. If you are quoting French, follow French rules or use standard English quotation marks.