Exploring the Right Double Angle Quote (»): More Than Just Punctuation
The right double angle quote (»), also known as a right-pointing guillemet, is a typographical punctuation mark primarily used to indicate quotations in several languages, including French, Spanish, and Russian. In digital design and website navigation, it frequently serves as a directional arrow or "next" indicator to guide users to subsequent pages.
Guillemets take their name from the 16th-century French punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé, who is credited with popularizing their use. While English typography relies heavily on standard curly quotes, many European languages adopted these angled marks as their standard quotation styling. They typically appear in pairs (« »), with the right-pointing version closing a quote in French, or opening a quote in languages like German and Danish.
In the Unicode standard, this symbol is officially designated as "Right-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark." It lives at the code point U+00BB and belongs to the Latin-1 Supplement block.
Beyond traditional publishing, this symbol has found a massive second life in digital and technical contexts. Web designers heavily utilize it in breadcrumb navigation (e.g., Home » Category » Product) and pagination buttons to indicate forward movement. On social media platforms like X and Instagram, users frequently type it to draw attention to links or calls to action in their bios. While programmers use the standard double greater-than sign (>>) for bitwise right-shift operators in languages like C++, the actual » character occasionally appears in specialized text processing, user interface design, or as a visual placeholder for data streams.
Typing the right double angle quote is simple across different operating systems. On a Mac, press Option + Shift + \ (backslash). Windows users can hold Alt and type 0187 on the numeric keypad. Web developers can easily insert it using the HTML entity ». On iOS and Android smartphones, you can usually find it by long-pressing the standard quotation mark key or the greater-than sign in your on-screen keyboard.
Visually similar but distinct symbols include the left double angle quote («), which serves as its partner, and the single right-pointing angle quote (›). It is also frequently confused with two standard greater-than signs (>>), though the guillemet is smaller, more tightly spaced, and vertically centered. For a colorful, modern alternative in media contexts, many people opt for the Fast-Forward Button emoji (⏩).