Guillaume Le Bé

Guillaume Le Bé (* 1525 in Troyes , † 1598 in Paris ) was a French die cutter , type designer , type caster and publisher of the Renaissance . In present-day France it is called Guillaume I Le Bé to distinguish it from its namesake Guillaume II Le Bé .

Life

Le Bé was born in Troyes and studied with the printer Robert Estienne . In 1545 he went to Venice, where he worked in various printing houses. Le Bé also designed Greek and Latin letters, but he was most famous for his Hebrew types, which he used to create wonderful typefaces in the style of old manuscripts. When his employer and friend Claude Garamond died in 1561, he bought some of the equipment for Garamond's die cutting shop from his widow. Le Bé spent the end of his life back in France (Paris). His writings later came into the possession of the foundry of Pierre Simon Fournier .

Guillemets

Although the quotation marks called " Guillemets " were used as early as 1527 to mark quotations, the French name was not found until 1677 in the "Considérations en faveur de la langue françoise" (considerations in favor of the French language) by Marolles. It goes back to the namesake Guillaume II 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).