The Left Double Angle Quote («): History, Usage, and How to Type It
The Left Double Angle Quote («), also known as a left guillemet, is a typographic punctuation mark primarily used to open quotations in languages such as French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. In modern digital spaces, it frequently appears in website navigation as a "previous" button or a stylistic bullet point.
The term "guillemet" roughly translates to "little William," affectionately named after the 16th-century French punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé, who pioneered their use. Originally carved into metal type to gracefully frame spoken dialogue, these elegant, chevron-like symbols offered a distinctly European alternative to the high-hanging curly quotation marks preferred by English printers. Interestingly, usage varies by language: French typography traditionally adds a non-breaking space after the «, while Russian and Spanish snap the symbol directly against the first word.
In the Unicode Standard, the Left Double Angle Quote is registered as U+00AB and resides within the Latin-1 Supplement block. This early placement guarantees flawless rendering across virtually all devices, fonts, and operating systems.
Beyond traditional typography, the symbol has found a second life on the internet. In web design and mobile apps, « acts as a universal navigational signpost pointing backward—perfect for "previous page" pagination links or collapsing sidebars. Programmers often notice its striking resemblance to the double less-than sign (<<), which is famously used as a bitwise left-shift operator or data stream indicator in languages like C++ and Ruby. However, the true U+00AB character is strictly designed for text and user interfaces. On social media, internet users sometimes rely on « as a decorative arrow to boldly draw attention to a link, quote, or a previous comment.
Typing the Left Double Angle Quote is straightforward once you know the right keyboard shortcuts. On a Mac, press Option + \ (backslash). Windows users can hold Alt and type 0171 on the numeric keypad. If you are on Linux, tap the Compose key followed by tapping < twice. Mobile users can easily access it by long-pressing the standard quotation mark key on iOS or Android virtual keyboards.
Make sure not to confuse « with its visual cousins. Its natural counterpart is the Right Double Angle Quote (», U+00BB), which neatly closes the phrase. It also looks strikingly similar to the mathematical Much Less-Than symbol (≪, U+226A), but the guillemet is specifically kerned and vertically aligned to sit beautifully within a line of regular text.