Down angled quote (« and ») in HTML

Question

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Does unicode or HTML have a vertical double guillemet (chevron)?

Is there a downwards facing alternative to &laquo and &raquo (« and » respectively)?

I have tried to find an answer elsewhere but to no avail. I assume css rotating the text is the only real answer.

related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8125263/does-unicode-or-html-have-a-vertical-double-guillemet-chevron — Daniel A. White, Oct 15 '12 at 16:13
You should have specified what you are really up to (some sort of arrows, as your comments indicate), as this is clearly not about quotation marks, despite question heading and tags. — Jukka K. Korpela, Oct 15 '12 at 16:36
It was for a sign where the text was written vertically and needed quoting ;) — rickyduck, Oct 16 '12 at 13:38
You can use CSS rotation by 90 degrees https://stackoverflow.com/a/47261249/10634638 — bestinamir, May 29 '19 at 21:11

score 27 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 15 '12 at 16:26

The short answer to your question is "No, there aren't."

&laquo and &raquo are not actually intended as direction arrows, despite their frequent usage as such.

What they are actually intended for is hinted at by their entity names -- they're supposed to be "angled quotes".

Certain European countries (notably France) tend to use these characters for speech marks instead of the inverted-comma style quote marks that are more commonly used by the English speaking world, and that is what these characters are actually meant for -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillemet for more info.

Given this, it's hardly surprising that there aren't any up and down arrow variants of them.

Feel free to use them as directional arrows (everyone else does, even if the semantics are questionable), but don't expect them to have every variant you might want, because they're not graphics; they're typographical characters.

I guess if you really want to, you could use CSS to rotate the existing left and right arrows by 90 degrees. I wouldn't suggest it as a good idea though.

I know I'm late to the party, but I'm curious: Why do you think it's not a good idea? — Ricardo Zea, Jan 22 '18 at 03:53
Even later to the party but @RicardoZea I don't think it's a good idea since this glyph isn't square you get strange offsets when rotating. — Daniel Tate, Dec 08 '20 at 00:37
@DanielTate They went to the moon for the first time in 1960, handling a non-square object after rotating it shouldn't be THAT much of a problem, now would it? ;). Flexbox to the rescue my friend :) - `display: flex; align-items: center;` Well, would you look at that beauty! — Ricardo Zea, Dec 08 '20 at 02:58

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 15 '12 at 16:07

6

No, there are no vertical versions of those quotes. A good alternative might be these? ⇐ ⇑ ⇒ ⇓

⇐ &uArr; ⇒ &dArr;

Else, rotating is indeed going to be a good option.

answered Oct 15 '12 at 16:07

Stephan Muller

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He wants alternatives for `«` you can see this for other http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2701192/ascii-character-for-up-down-triangle-arrow-to-display-in-html – Mr. Alien Oct 15 '12 at 16:08
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Thanks. I have looked at various unicode arrows and they aren't aesthetically pleasing for my circumstance. The closest was `▶` for `▶` which can be rotated. Maybe css rotation will have to suffice. thanks! – rickyduck Oct 15 '12 at 16:14

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 15 '12 at 16:41

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Using icon fonts might be another good option.

Here's a popular one: http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/

The icon you might be interested in: http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/#icon/icon-chevron-down

answered Oct 15 '12 at 16:41

Jaideep Singh

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Furthermore, www.fontello.com provides the same service with a range of fonts. – rickyduck Dec 19 '12 at 09:46

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 15 '12 at 16:09

I don't think there are such characters in Unicode (HTML has nothing to do here).

What do you intend to do with them? If the intended usage is for arrows, you can look here (for line-head arrows) and here (for triangles etc. which can be used as arrows). Those are lists of Unicode character that could be useful for you.

Down angled quote (« and ») in HTML

4 Answers4