Guillemets in LaTeX («»)

Question

I need the characters «» in my LaTeX document. I'm writing in English though, and I don't want to use Babel. I have the following hack but I'd like a better way:

\newcommand{\q}[1]{{%
\font\larm = larm1000%
\larm%
\char 190}{#1}{%
\font\larm = larm1000%
\larm%
\char 191}}

score 65 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

65

There are several ways to do this:

With standard methods, you will find \guillemotleft and \guillemotright. For this you need \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} (which is recommended anyways).
Using the language switching capabilities of babel, e.g. \foreignlanguage.
Using csquotes and its \foreignquote command.

Personally, I would recommend the third option.

The similar looking mathmode symbols ≪ and ≫ (much less/greater than) are created with \ll and \gg.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Sep 02 '10 at 18:17

Caramdir

89,023
26
255
291

10

I'd probably favour csquotes, as it means you keep the semantics of the mark-up and can reuse the source in other places more readily. – Joseph Wright Sep 02 '10 at 18:34
14

Unfortunately it is indeed spelled incorrectly. It should be guillemetleft and guillemetright (with an "e"). A guillemot with an "o" is a seabird :-) But I think we're stuck with it. – Peter Flynn Jan 19 '12 at 10:48
@PeterFlynn In my case it works only with ''o''. – Dog_69 Oct 16 '19 at 22:51
2

Of course. Read what I said. It was misspelled when created. – Peter Flynn Jan 04 '20 at 12:19
See my last answer, \MarkOuterQuote{"} is simpler with csquote package – Metal3d Apr 28 '20 at 07:01
And if you are using it regularly here in a function: \newcommand{\guillemet}[1]{\guillemotleft #1 \guillemotright} – David Beauchemin Nov 14 '20 at 22:37
Although the thread is for ways in which to prevent using babel, I also needed fontenc to make the guillemets look right with babel. Without it, they look flattened and with strokes that resemble Arial. – Mew Nov 10 '22 at 22:50

score 32 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '11 at 15:56

32

There's also a convenient way to do it with Latin Modern:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lmodern}

\begin{document}

<<Quoted text>>.

\end{document}

answered Mar 08 '11 at 15:56

Andrey Vihrov

22,325

1

Nice and intuitive! – Hendrik Vogt Mar 08 '11 at 15:59
Tried inside a knitr document. and this was the only way that really worked for me. I must admit I am surprised cause the other answers looked sound, too. However thanks Andrey! – hans0l0 Dec 19 '12 at 09:45
Does not work for me. I use koma-script book with babel – lalebarde May 06 '14 at 15:03

score 17 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 01 '23 at 08:52

17

You could type it directly if you use an utf8 encoding :

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
«For example.»
\end{document}

But, the automatic spacing isn't correct — at least for French typography. As suggested in the comments, you can always input manually the correct spacing (~, for non-breaking space).

edited Mar 01 '23 at 08:52

egreg

1,121,712

answered Mar 08 '11 at 22:23

PHL

7,555

1

I think you can add the due non-breaking spaces manually with the ~ character. – Olivier Feb 26 '23 at 21:45

score 13 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 31 '14 at 20:24

13

I find this way is very convenient:

package: \usepackage[frenchb]{babel}

in text: \og text \fg{}

answered Oct 31 '14 at 20:24

jeanned

131

4

This is indeed the correct way when using French with babel. – egreg Oct 31 '14 at 20:35
@egreg and wrong for non-French text. – vonbrand Sep 01 '18 at 23:09

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 28 '20 at 07:00

4

The best I now use in french is:

\usepackage{csquotes}
\MakeOuterQuote{"}

I now can use " to as "guillemet" and it's correctly replaced by « and »

answered Apr 28 '20 at 07:00

Metal3d

163

This did not work in French for me. – Cedric Aug 03 '20 at 13:04
Weird, it works perfectly for me (I'm french) – Metal3d Jan 09 '21 at 08:35
Have you tried with Babel, cause it definitely worked here – Tiwenty Jul 21 '21 at 15:35

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 03 '20 at 13:15

2

I tried several of those options all leading to a small square instead of «». This did the trick for me.

\documentclass{article}  
\usepackage[francais]{babel} % guillemets \og text \fg{}
\usepackage{aeguill} % guillemets
 \begin{document}
 \og text \fg{}
 \end{document}

answered Aug 03 '20 at 13:15

Cedric

139

1

The OP requests this without use of Babel. Also, Babel has various unwanted side effects such as hyphenation, change of parindent in the first line, change of itemization bullets etc. – Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog Mar 28 '21 at 21:14

Guillemets in LaTeX («»)

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