virgolette

Virgolette are punctuation marks used to enclose direct speech, quotations, or a phrase taken from another source. The term is Italian and, in Italian typography, it often refers to the set of quotation marks used to delimit quoted material. The primary form in Italian is the pair of guillemets: opening « and closing ». These double angle quotes serve as the normal quotation marks in many European languages, including Italian, French, and Spanish.

In practice, Italian and other languages may mix marks for nested quotations. A common convention is to use the guillemets for the outer quotation and alternative marks for inner quotes, such as "..." or '...' in many modern styles. Some languages can also employ other nesting symbols, for example using ‹...› in certain contexts. In English-language publishing, the preferred marks are the typographic curly quotes “…” and ‘...’, with straight quotes " and ' increasingly used in plain text.

Historically, guillemets derive from a French typographic practice and are named after the French printer Guillaume Le Bé, who popularized their use in early modern printing. Today, the set of virgolette includes both the angle quotes « » and the variety of curved or straight quotation marks used across languages.

In digital text, quotation marks are encoded in Unicode. Common representations include the left and right double quotation marks “ ” (U+201C, U+201D) and the guillemets « » (U+00AB, U+00BB). ASCII text often uses the simple straight quotes " and ' as alternatives. Virgolette play a functional role in signaling quoted material and guiding readers through dialogue and sources, with language-specific conventions shaping their exact form and nesting rules.