Why the French quotation mark is named after a 16th-century printer

Cultures · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Guillemets are the sideways chevrons that replace standard quotation marks across much of Europe and Asia. Though they carry the name of a French printer, their history is tangled in digital errors, shifting linguistic trends, and a peculiar misspelling that became permanently embedded in the architecture of modern computing.

The guillemet, a diminutive of the name Guillaume, is widely associated with the French printer and punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé, who lived from 1525 to 1598. Despite this namesake, Le Bé did not invent the symbols. The first recorded appearance of these marks dates back to a 1527 book printed by Josse Bade. While they are often called French quotes, they are also known as duckfoot quotes or angle quotation marks, distinct from the larger angle brackets used in mathematics and linguistics.

The global usage of guillemets is remarkably varied. In French, they are typically spaced out by narrow non-breaking spaces and point outwards, whereas in languages like German or Croatian, they may point inwards. Their utility has shifted over time; for instance, Turkish usage has largely been replaced by standard quotation marks since the late 20th century, and Bulgarian usage became rare after 1990. In Chinese, they serve a specific role, denoting titles of books, films, and magazines rather than direct speech.

The digital life of the guillemet is defined by a permanent, accidental legacy. Both Adobe PostScript and the X Window System mistakenly labeled the symbol as a 'guillemot'—the name of a seabird. Because these labels were written into foundational computer file formats, the error cannot be corrected without breaking compatibility. Furthermore, the symbols occupy specific slots in character sets like CP437 and ISO 8859, which were later inherited by Unicode. These technical constraints ensure that while the guillemet remains a vital tool for typographers and linguists, its digital identity remains forever tied to a bird-related typo from the early days of computing.

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