Talk:Guillemet

Comment
Do other English speakers really say ['geɪ.lə.mɛt]? I've never heard anyone pronounce the word, but I'd say something like ['gɪ.jə.mɛt]. <22 Feb, Utilitaritron>
 * I noticed the funky IPA, too. It doesn't look right to me and I've never heard it said that way by native French speakers. According to my Collins-Robert (ISBN:0-06-095690-9) French-English dictionary, the IPA is (using a non-IPA keyboard) /gijmE/. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 11:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I say ['gɪləmət]. Evertype 00:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The American Heritage first gives an Anglicized gĭl'ə-mět'. I've been inserting a w--gwĭl'ə-mět--obviously a "spelling pronunciation" by one whose French is patchy at best.  I've never heard the word said by anyone but myself or someone I'd given the term to. GeorgeTSLC 00:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

In Adobe Systems font software, the word is incorrectly spelled guillemot.
Perhaps the clever Adobe people wanted to combine the word "guillemet" and "mot" (word)? Can the author be certain that this isn't a trademark or otherwise deliberate portmanteau? It sounds too catchy and makes too much sense to be a misspelling. My vote is to remove this from the article until it can be verified. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 11:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I suspect they were just mixing it up with the word guillemot, a kind of auk. Evertype 00:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Look at any AFM file for a Type 1 font with a reasonable character set, and you'll see "Guillemot" right there in the encoding. Here are some small excerpts from an AFM file:

C 34 ; WX  600 ; N quotedbl         ; B  154  337  448  579 ; C 39 ; WX  600 ; N quoteright       ; B  215  317  396  579 ; C 96 ; WX  600 ; N quoteleft        ; B  210  334  391  596 ; C 169 ; WX 600 ; N quotesingle      ; B  243  330  358  579 ; C 170 ; WX 600 ; N quotedblleft     ; B  107  341  475  596 ; C 171 ; WX 600 ; N guillemotleft    ; B  149   44  453  407 ; C 172 ; WX 600 ; N guilsinglleft    ; B  232   44  370  407 ; C 173 ; WX 600 ; N guilsinglright   ; B  231   44  370  407 ; C 184 ; WX 600 ; N quotesinglbase   ; B  199 -147  380  116 ; C 185 ; WX 600 ; N quotedblbase     ; B  114 -139  481  116 ; C 186 ; WX 600 ; N quotedblright    ; B  122  325  489  579 ; C 187 ; WX 600 ; N guillemotright   ; B  148   44  453  407 ;


 * I really don't think that font encoding vectors are the place to coin "catchy phrases", plus Adobe is apparently also responsible for the "caron" botch. AnonMoos 23:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Or, you could get over it. Evertype 00:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Or you could stop trying to promote Adobe errors as so-called "standard" terminology. AnonMoos 10:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The article covers and sources this error and its implications. (The source was added after the original comment). Notinasnaid 11:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, Michael Everson's rather petty comment was a carryover from previous discussions at Talk:Caron, rather than specifically addressing this article. AnonMoos 11:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm tired of everyone complaining about Adobe's mistakes, is all. And my comment above on this page addresses the guillemot. Twice. Evertype 16:40, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You made two comments on "00:17, 1 August 2006" -- one was pure hypothetical speculation, and one was in reference to some kind of grudge you hold against me for previous discussion on Talk:Caron. AnonMoos 21:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I made three comments, but never mind. I have no grudge. I've edited the article in any case. Perhaps to the good. Evertype 21:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Linux systems
There where no instructions for how to do these characters on linux so I added some. Thing is I'm running KDE with a British 105 key layout and I don't have any way of testing if this works on other layouts or linux systems. Could someone please verify this isn't unique to my system's configuration? 84.9.55.42 (talk) 22:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Swedish?
I've never seen them used to indicate speech in Swedish... We use "..." as far as I know. not registered but yeah, Swedish..
 * You probably don't read enough :) It's used in Swedish typography all right. It's probably seen less use in recent years, but I think there might be somewhat of a comeback going on. The jargon term is »gåsögon» (goose eyes). 195.149.148.24 (talk) 11:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I've never seen it in Swedish text either, but then I mostly read English literature. The Swedish article on quotation marks states (paraphrased): 'Swedish text normally uses only the right-pointing quotation marks ” and ’, and less frequently › and ».' Thus, my opinion is that the article is misleading; it could easily be seen to state that Swedish uses only the less common characters. I suggest the addition of a short comment, explaining that the use is rare, or something else to that effect. Of course, Swedish shouldn't be treated specially, and any other language where this is true should have the same text. If there are a sufficient amount, perhaps they should have a category for themselves. 83.227.162.5 (talk) 15:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Today, the article refers to Quotation mark, non-English usage, which does point out that » is not the normal quotation mark. Otherwise I tend to agree with User:83.227.162.5. Just for future reference, » is kind of an "official" form in .se (Svenska skrivregler documents it, even if it nowhere recommends it), and I bet most people have no problems reading it. But it's rare, and signals that you may have spent too much thought on the layout of your text. I remember the music magazine Pop used it. JöG (talk) 21:14, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Internal Inconsistency WRT Swedish use

 * In last rightward-pointing "»...»" section it says "this and «...» are rarely used" but Swedish doesn't appear in the outward-pointing section. Rather it appears only on the inward pointing section. If Swedes mostly use " but sometimes use »...», then do they ever use «...» or »...«, and if so which one is it? Once known can we fix the page to match? I'm only half Swede and only speak English so I couldn't say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.88.176.4 (talk) 07:06, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Hungarian
I've never seen guillemets in Hungarian either as far as I can recall. If it is ever used, it must only occur under some rare circumstances. --CyHawk (talk) 17:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Guillemets in Word
Hello,

I would like Word *always* to insert guillemets when I type quotation marks. Isn't there any way to do this without having to write a Macro or change my entire keyboard layout?

--213.168.109.178 (talk) 22:28, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

=***I believe we should call them directional(s) or arrow(s) ...I mean this is English Language Arts...Why slam a French word in the middle of ,our description of our language symbol naming...This is the kind of Cr@p that makes English so tough to learn...K.I.S.S. Let Arithmetic and programming decide whiat they refer to it as...i mean look at the + sign...also, and, plus, add...whatever right sounds English huh? and two of those are used for Arithmetic/Math...no problems there! simplify please=Suggest changes?==

Erm...rewind and fast forward in some programming languages? Consider rewrite:

"They are also used as symbols for lesser than, greater than(for the single <) and for left and right bitshifts(C/C++ - java too? Confirm?) in some programming languages, as well as rewind and fast forward on various media players, such as home VCR and DVD players or handheld MP3 players." 60.242.210.189 (talk) 06:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I second that proposal. I have a PhD in Computer Science and know well over a dozen programming languages yet have never encountered such a thing as these alleged "rewind" and "fast forward" operators. Moreover, they are highly implausible because this would have to refer to tape storage - but in the days when that was common operators were only used for arithmetic and logic expressions, and something like "rewind tape" would have been either a built-in keyword, or (more likely) a library call, not an operator.

While we're at it, one could also note here the use of '<', '>', and '>>' to denote I/O redirection in Unix shell languages. Though I fail to see what any of this has to do with guillemets... 58.96.126.8 (talk) 08:50, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Bizarre. < > (two characters each) are NOT the same as guillemets. The stuff about programming is definitively wrong. 86.184.132.79 (talk) 18:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Should Chinese be listed?
The Unicode standard lists &#x300A; as LEFT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET (not to be confused with &#x27EA;, MATHEMATICAL LEFT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET), which seems decidedly different than a Guillemet. Should Chinese (and by extension, North Korean) be listed or removed? --moof (talk) 10:47, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Primes and double-primes?
Is it worth mentioning that all the quotation marks (“…”, and ‘…’) on this page are incorrect? I only see single and double primes ("…", and '…'). These so-called “straight quotes” are easier to type, but are certainly not quotation marks, and should be reserved for indicating either inches and feet, or seconds and minutes. They’re even used in the quotation marks section of the right sidebar!

miltonBradley 20:02, 26 February 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cpoticha (talk • contribs)


 * First off, characters U+0022 and U+0027 are officially defined by the Unicode standard as "QUOTATION MARK" and "APOSTROPHE; APOSTROPHE-QUOTE", so they're not technically primes (which are completely separate characters U+2032 and U+2033 in Unicode). In any case, “ ” ‘ ’ are the "smartquotes", which are not required by WP:MOS.  Smartquotes certainly look visually better in most cases, but they have a somewhat complex history in computer character-set standards which hindered their adoption by websites which place importance on cross-platform interoperability for a number of years. AnonMoos (talk) 21:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

How do you actually type the "smart quotes" on a normal keyboard? RotubirtnoC (talk) 16:22, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Khmer should be removed
I'm a native Khmer speaker and I've never been taught about using guillemet nor ever see any of them in real life (we use American quotation marks). My speculation is this is obsolete (Cambodia used to be a French colony for almost a century). — Preceding unsigned comment added by ចេក ម៉ានុត (talk • contribs) 09:03, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * If you are a native Khmer speaker, you surely know better than me but… are you sure? The Khmer keyboard does have them. Also, several fonts designed specifically for Khmer (i.e., not having Latin letters) do have them. Code Page Guy (talk) 15:05, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Internal Inconsistency WRT single
Need to resolve contradictory definitions:

Second intro paragraph says: "single ‹ and › -is a guillemet"

But first paragraph in "Guillemets in computing" says:

"a corresponding single angle (not actually a guillemet)"

Which is correct? ArtKocsis (talk) 19:43, 28 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't know, but several languages use only the doubled marks (never the single)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:39, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Guillemets in computing
This section sounds like nationalistic gibberish, contains no sources (especially to support the claim that guillemets lead to SGML) and is badly written.

I suggest it be removed. Swissnetizen (talk) 17:26, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * +1 Jordan Brown (talk) 01:31, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Highlighting small symbols using template:code
I have been using undefined to highlight tiny symbols, especially any (like straight apostrophe) that could be confused as markup or just plain overlooked: it makes it clearer that this is the symbol being described, it is not just part of the text. So I wondered why you removed it from guillemet: is it just a subjective taste thing?

(BTW, this template is different from undefined, which I tried in another context and didn't find at all helpful. Compare ' with ' and just plain ' ).--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:38, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That template also uses a monospace font, so it is pretty bad for a lot of typographical characters, as they tend to shrink, compress, or expand them to be fixed-width. If there is another way to put the character in a box it might be useful.Spitzak (talk) 18:43, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, ok, now I understand your edit note. Right now, though, I really believe that we need the highlight so I will revert per WP:BRD pending a better solution because the cure is worse than the disease for most readers. I do understand and sympathise with your point though, so will search for a functionally equivalent template that doesn't have this annoying side effect. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:51, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

This seems to work, I can't find any way to get the box other than the code command:  -> I would get rid of all the parenthesis, quotes, angle brackets, and other stuff people have used. Even in this example there are now unnecessary parenthesis.
 * I have opened a discussion at template talk:code. Would you like to add your idea there? We had best run it past the citizen jury to check that it doesn't raise another set of problems, such as for screen readers, for instance? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I would not use syntaxhighlighting. As far as I can tell &lt;code> is just "box and monospace" and is closer.Spitzak (talk) 19:45, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

The template:navbox punctuation/set used this: -> &thinsp;«&thinsp;

It looks like template:char does not exist yet so that could be used. May be a good idea to insert this into template:unichar, and to go to the hundreds of pages talking about characters and put it on every single instance, simultaneously removing all the quotes and parenthesis and angle brackets used for this. Seems like a big job.Spitzak (talk) 21:00, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It certainly looks promising but let's give it 48 hours see if anyone else comes in at template talk:code. I agree that if the symbol is in a box it doesn't need brackets too.
 * Either way, I think it best to steer clear of unichar for a while because it has its own issues (see user talk:DePiep). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:14, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Ditto mark in France?
An HTML comment I just removed suggested » is also used as a ditto mark in France. Is this so? Is this documented in a reliable source (possibly only in the French language)? -- Beland (talk) 01:16, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The second citation for French usage at ditto mark: might suggest yes but fr:wikipedia:guillemet itératif does not exist. So it would seem that it is specific to Quebec. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:12, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Use in Czech
I've never seen this style of quotation marks used in Czech even though I'm a Czech native and have been living in the Czech Republic and working as a translator between Czech and English most of my life. Until someone provides a credible reference that attests to this usage, I'm removing Czech from the list. Eltomito (talk) 20:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)