Guillemets, usages européens

["Jean Fontaine" <jfontain@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Olivier Randier nous a déjà demandé des infos sur les divers usages
nationaux des guillemets. Au cas où il ne connaîtrait pas déjà, voici un
truc sur lequel je suis tombé sur le site d'Unicode (extrait d'un
corrigendum daté de juillet 1998).

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Language based usage of quotation characters

Low Quotation Marks
U+201A SINGLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK, U+201E DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK where
used are unambiguously opening quotation marks. All other quotation marks
have heterogeneous semantics. They may represent opening or closing
punctuation marks depending on usage.

European Usage
The use of quotation marks differs systematically by language and by medium.
In European typography it is common to use guillemets (single or double
angle quotation marks) for books and, except for some languages, curly
quotation marks in office automation. Single guillemets can be found for
quotes inside quotes. The following description does not attempt to be
complete, but intends to document a range of known usages of quotation mark
characters. In this section, the words SINGLE and DOUBLE are omitted from
character names where there is no conflict or both are meant.

English uses LEFT and RIGHT QUOTATION MARK for opening and closing
quotations. It is typical to use single quotes to designate quotes within
quotes.

Czech, German, and Slovak use the low-9 style of quotation mark for opening
instead of the standard open quotes. They use the LEFT QUOTATION MARK style
of quotation mark for closing instead of the more common RIGHT QUOTATION
MARK forms. When guillemets are used in German books, they point to the
quoted text. This is the inverse of French usage.

Danish, Finnish, and Swedish  use the same RIGHT QUOTATION MARK character
for both opening and closing quotation character. This is true for both
office automation usage as well as books (which sometimes use the guillemets
or RIGHT POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE quotation marks for both opening and
closing).

Hungarian and Polish follow German for the double quotes and the
Scandinavian languages for the single quote. Presumably, these languages
avoid the low single quote in order to prevent confusion with the comma.

French, Greek, Russian and Slovenian use the guillemets, but Slovenian
follows German usage in their direction. Of these languages at least French
inserts space between text and quotation marks.  In the French case, NBSP
can be used to distinguish the space that is enclosed between quotation mark
and text; this helps line breaking algorithms.
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Plus de détails techniques (errata sur le codage des divers guillemets) à :
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/uni2errata/QuoteErrata.html

Jean Fontaine
jfontain@xxxxxxxxxxx