Skip to content
The Unicode Lapidary

/static/lapidario/en/gema/aspas-angulares/

Menu

UNI-009 · Quotes

« »

The double arrows of French quotation — guillemets, by their given name.

« and » quote in French, Russian and much of European typography — and in the older Portuguese tradition. They are not two less-than signs glued together: they are gems of their own which, in French, carry a narrow no-break space inside.

The mistake is << and >> faking guillemets. The entities are &laquo; and &raquo;; the thin space that goes with them lives in the next drawer.

Wrong:  <<Bonjour>> — less-than signs faking quotes
Right:  « Bonjour » — angular, with the thin space inside
The arrows quote; the less-than signs compare.