Double Chevron Right

The Double Chevron Right character, », is often used to indicate the next selection when you are stepping through a sequence of Web pages. In Drupal you might go to the administration page then select content. In your documentation you can describe that selection as Administer » Content. The Double Chevron Right is also called the Right Chevron. Right Angle Quote, », », displays the same character.

Double Chevron Right is in the ISO Latin-1 character set. You type the character into HTML as ». Example: »

Name or number

» » and » » produce the same result. » is a HTML special character using a numeric entry. » is a HTML special character using a named entry. Some special characters have names. Most have numbers. The numbers start with three digits and go up to four digits. » is repeated as » in the four digit set.

Related characters

Guillemets are similar to chevrons and are used as quotation characters. They can also be used to indicate rewind or fast forward. The guillemets are named after their inventor, a printer named Guillaume Le Bé. One of his works is shown in www.newberry.org/collections/NewAcq2007.html.

« « and « « produce the same result, a Left Guillemet, Left Angle Quote, opening Double Chevron, Double Chevron Left, Double Chevron Left Bracket, or Left Chevron. The URI encoding is %C2%AB. On Windows you might be able to enter this character using alt+0171 but see the nodes on keyboard entry below. Apple Mac users can try opt+\.

» » » », and » » produce the same result, a Right Guillemet, Right Angle Quote, closing Double Chevron, Double Chevron Right, Double Chevron Right Bracket, or Chevron right. The URI encoding is %C2%BB. You might be able to enter this character on Windows using alt+0187 and on a Mac using opt+shift+\.

‹ ‹ and &lsaquo; ‹ produce the same result, a Left Single Angle Quote, opening Single Chevron, Single Chevron Left, Single Chevron Left Bracket, or Left Single Chevron. The URI encoding is %E2%80%B9.

› › and &rsaquo; › produce the same result, a Right Single Angle Quote, closing Single Chevron, Single Chevron Right, Single Chevron Right Bracket, or Right Single Chevron. The URI encoding is %E2%80%BA.

Quotation marks

The French language, and a few other languages, use « and » as quotation marks. «bonjour»

Danish uses » then « as quotation marks. »hej«

Danish uses › then ‹ as second level quotation marks. »Frank sagde ›goddag‹ til Susan«

There are a lot of other combinations in use across various languages.

URLs

A URL and a URI are the same thing. A URI is a Uniform Resource Identifier. A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is a URI that maps across the Web. Some URIs cannot be used as links on the Web because they define locations of things outside the Web, perhaps on your local disks. The format and encoding is the same. You cannot use » direct in a URI. You have to encode the » as %C2%BB. You could encode the » as %C2%BB in a URL but URLs do not work with special characters in some parts of the URL.

A URL has the Web address before the ? and a query string after the ?. A » is unlikely to work before the ? and may work in the query string after the ? when encoded as %C2%BB. If you are creating a search form and want to allow » in the search text, make your form use method="post" instead of method="get" so the text will not have to go through a query string.

Keyboard entry

In some software you can enter Double Chevron Right by holding down the Alt key then typing -0187. You might have to use the numeric keypad for the -0187. You might have to switch Num Lock on.

Alt+0187 is a common way to indicate the character entry for documentation in Word processing and other applications. The + indicates you hold down the Alt key while typing 0187. Your operating system will allow some special character entry then your application will either add more special characters or replace the ones supplied by the operating system. Applications have long historical reasons for doing things a different way, especially if the application was original written for a different operating system or before operating systems offered modern features. Experiment.

Apple Mac applications may use opt+shift+\. There are so many different unrelated operating systems for the Mac, including the current Unix based operating system, and so many applications on the Mac written by developers what want to be different, that your results may vary. Experiment. Please add a comment for any Mac application that does not work using opt+shift+\.

I experimented with Firefox. My keyboard does not have a Num Lock indicator and Firefox does not display the Num lock status. With Num Lock on (probably), Alt-0187 worked. When I switched Num Lock to the opposite setting and tried again, Filefox jumped to the browser home page. In Abiword, the result was the same with Num Lock at both settings but the result was a double not sign, which may be the way Abiword displays a character it does not understand. OpenOffice does not display the Num Lock status, produces a double not sign for Alt-0187 when the Num Lock is on and jumps to the menu when Num Lock is off.

Using the HTML code is safer for anything that will end up as HTML.

Binary form

If you are digging around inside an Intel or AMD based computer, including all Windows machines, modern Apple Macs with their PC clone hardware, all Linux machines, and some Unix machines, you could look for binary 10111011 or hexadecimal bb. The search is probably useless because modern systems use UTF encoding and two or three bytes per character. Data in 8 bit format is likely to be code, not text.

History

The chevron started as an architectural symbol to indicate the beams joining to form the peak of a roof. The military adopted the symbol to indicate the ranks supporting the leader.

See more HTML special characters in HTML Special Characters.