Guillemets

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
«»
Guillemets in French and Swiss usage
»«
Guillemets in German use
‹›
simple guillemets -
in French and Swiss usage
›‹
simple guillemets -
in German usage

Guillemets ([ gijˈmɛ ];Singular:Guillemet; borrowed from French), alsopointed charactersor (borrowed from English) chevrons , are a form ofquotation marksthat each consist of two identical angled dashes that do not exceed the lower case letter height (x- Height) protrude. It is also available as a simple form ("half pointed character") made up of just one line. When used with the point inward, they are also known asreverse French quotation marksorgulls.

Typography and appearance

Guillemets each consist of two identically designed and equally high angled lines. The upper end is near the lower case letter height (x-height), the lower end occasionally on, mostly above the baseline . Vertically, the end points are arranged in straight letters one above the other, in italics mostly according to the inclination of the letters. The angle is mostly a right or slightly open angle. The legs are always the same length, straight or (especially in serif fonts ) curved slightly towards a larger angular opening, evenly thick or (also especially in serif fonts) thinning towards the ends facing away from the angle.

Guillemets in Helvetica Neue, Arial , Times New Roman , Calibri , Cambria , DejaVu Serif, and Courier New fonts . Bottom row: italic

In the latter two characteristics, Guillemets differ from greater / less signs and angle brackets : In the former, both characteristics never appear, in the latter, at most, the second characteristic occurs occasionally.

Angle brackets , smaller / larger characters, and simple guillemets (half-pointed characters) in Cambria, DejaVu Serif, Andron Mega Corpus, Andika, and Everson Mono fonts

use

In French and the other Romance languages as well as in Switzerland (for all languages) they are the usual representation of the quotation mark and are used with the tips pointing outwards. In German , guillemets are, in addition to the German quotation marks ("..."), also valid quotation marks. In German, however, they are mostly used the other way round, i.e. with the tips inwards. You can find them in German mainly in letterpress printing , where a more elegant appearance is desired. In beautiful literature , for example in the novel , they are the standard in German-speaking countries. Here they are the first level in a hierarchy that uses single quotation marks as the third level, as in the following example:

 Besides, she was mischievous enough [...] »[...]› Yes, yes, friend, what one can experience! Two years ago, as Mozart wrote 'Don Juan' [...] '-' You have to be on it! 'He exclaimed in the first quarter of an hour,' and [...] so that I may stay that way who I am! ‹« 

- Eduard Mörike : German narrators, 1st volume, Insel Verlag 6th edition 1981, p. 163f

In France , the guillemets are also set with a space before and after the cited text:

  • «Example in France»
  • "Example in Switzerland"
  • "Example in Germany and Austria"

The official regulations for German and Austrian do not specify when German quotation marks and when guillemets should be used. Both options are equally important. In Duden Volume 9 (Correct and Good German) , the German quotation marks are assigned to handwriting and machine writing, while the Guillemets are assigned to German typesetting (letterpress). The DIN 5008 also provides both to be correct.

As with the quotation marks used in German, the guillemets also have a simple form. One advantage of the simple French form over the simple German form of the quotation marks is that it cannot be confused with the comma (opening quotation mark) or the apostrophe (closing quotation mark). The simple guillemets are to be distinguished from the mathematical symbols for larger (>) and smaller (<) - both factually and logically as well as typographically and glyphically - and therefore have different positions in the Unicode system.

  • ‹Example in France›
  • ‹Example in Switzerland›
  • ›Example in Germany and Austria‹

history

Guillemets were used to mark quotations as early as 1527. The French name is first found in 1677 in the Considérations en faveur de la langue françoise (German: considerations in favor of the French language ) by Michel de Marolles . This refers to Guillaume II Le Bé (not to be confused with the earlier namesake Guillaume I Le Bé ), to whom the (supposedly 1622) introduction of the quotation mark was wrongly ascribed. Guillemet is a diminutive for the name Guillaume (German: Wilhelm).

Representation on computer systems

HTML entities

In HTML , the quotation marks pointing to the right are &raquo;coded »with , the quotation marks pointing to the left« using &laquo; (right or left angle quote) . The simple variants are coded accordingly ›with &rsaquo;and‹ with &lsaquo; (right / left single angle quote) .

Latex

The LaTeX encodings for the Guillemets are \guillemotleftfor «as well as \guillemotrightfor», or \guilsinglleftfor ‹and \guilsinglrightfor›. “Left” and “right” are used analogously to the corresponding forms of angle brackets and therefore correspond to the Swiss use as quotation marks, not the German.

Keyboard input

On the German standard keyboard layout E1 according to DIN 2137-01: 2018-12 and the previous version T2 according to DIN 2137-01: 2012-06, the following are entered:

  • the (in German usage) opening guillemet (in DIN 5008 terminology: right-pointing pointed character) »: Alt Gr+x
  • the closing guillemet (left-pointing pointed sign) «: Alt Gr+v
  • the simple opening guillemet (half right-pointing pointed sign) ›: Alt Gr+y
  • the simple closing guillemet (half left-pointing pointed sign) ‹: Alt Gr+b

Microsoft Windows

Under Windows , there are several ways to insert Guillemets.

character Keyboard shortcut
« Alt+ 174or Alt+0171
» Alt+ 175or Alt+0187
Alt+0155
Alt+0139

The numbers listed can only be entered using the activated numeric keypad .

In addition to the aforementioned manual insertion, there is also the option of setting this up permanently using auto-correction for various word processors.

macOS

The guillemets are also available under macOS . These can be reached system-wide via the keyboard.

character Swiss keyboard German keyboard
« +, +Q
» + +, + +Q
+ +3 + +B
+ +N

Simple guillemets can be reached via the "Emoji and Symbols" dialog in the menu. Alternatively, the selection menu can be reached using the ctrl+ + key combination Leertaste.

AmigaOS

The "Guillemets" are also available under AmigaOS . These can be reached system-wide via the keyboard.

character Swiss keyboard German keyboard
« Alt+ Shift+9 Alt+5
» Alt+ Shift+0 Alt+6

Misspelling "guillemot"

In Adobe Inc.'s font software , its file format specifications, and all derived fonts that contain the characters, the guillemets are incorrectly referred to as “guillemot” instead of “guillemet” using the two characters “guillemotleft” and “guillemotright” ". In fact the French word called guillemot no quotes, but the Seevogelgattung of Lummen , thus has a different meaning.

Also called X11 which Guillemets in the file keysymdef.h with misspellings "XK_guillemotleft" and "XK_guillemotright". The misspelling can also be found in the LaTeX given above .

Web links

Commons : Guillemets  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Guillemet  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

See also

Individual evidence

  1. a b c DIN 5008 : 2020-03
  2. quotation marks . In: Duden - Correct and good German. 5th edition Mannheim 2001.
  3. ^ Institute for Textual Criticism, Rules for Manuscript Setup
  4. Scott Pakin: The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List. (PDF, 8.7 MB) January 19, 2017, p. 15 , archived from the original on September 28, 2017 ; Retrieved on September 28, 2017 (English, linking the original results in a mirror of CTAN , the archive link compare file: Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol list.pdf ).