French Typography for Writers

Why Any of This Shows

An English reader skims past French spacing as a quirk. A French reader may not be able to name what’s wrong with Vraiment? or a pair of straight " quotation marks, but will notice, the way you’d notice “teh” in a novel. It tells them nobody who publishes in French has looked at the book. If you’re a translator, an English-speaking author with a French edition, or a French writer who learned to type on an American keyboard, this is the page.

Spaces Around Punctuation

This is the table to keep. French distinguishes the normal word space from a no-break space, which stops the sign from being stranded alone at the start of a line, and a narrower no-break space called espace fine.

Sign	France (Lexique)	Quebec (OQLF)	Swiss table (Typoguide)
; ! ?	narrow no-break before	none before, or narrow if available	narrow before
:	no-break word space before	no-break before	narrow before
«	no-break word space after	no-break after	narrow after
»	no-break word space before	no-break before	narrow before
, .	nothing before	nothing before	nothing before

All of them take a normal space after, except « and the end of a paragraph. So you’d write, in France: Il a dit : « Vraiment ? ».

The characters are U+202F for the narrow no-break space and U+00A0 for the ordinary one.

The Argument About Width

The colon is the sore spot, so here is exactly what the sources say.

The Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l’Imprimerie nationale, the standard reference in France, sets out a table. Semicolon, exclamation mark and question mark take an espace fine insécable before them. The colon takes an espace mots insécable, the width of the word spaces on the line, and so do the insides of guillemets. So the colon isn’t treated like its three neighbours, and a colon with a narrow space is, by that table, not the rule in France.

The Office québécois de la langue française gives the colon and guillemets a no-break space as well, and says of the other three that it opts for no space, adding that a narrow one may be used where available.

Swiss practice goes the other way. The Typoguide table and the University of Lausanne’s 2026 style sheet both put a narrow space before all four signs, and inside guillemets.

Meanwhile many writers and much software use the ordinary no-break space everywhere, since narrow ones were long awkward to type and some programs handled them badly, a point the Quebec Office itself makes. That’s an honest compromise, and no reader of a novel will write in to complain.

What we’d take from all this: never a plain breaking space, because that’s the fault a reader will see, as a ? alone at the start of a line. Beyond that, follow your publisher’s house style or pick one system and hold to it. This site, for what it’s worth, sets a narrow no-break space before all four signs and inside guillemets. That’s our house style, it matches the Swiss table, and on the colon and guillemets it departs from the Lexique.

A publisher’s typesetter will set all this to house rules anyway. What they want from your manuscript is consistency, so a search and replace can do the work.

Guillemets, the French Quotation Marks

French text uses « … », whatever language the quoted words are in, with a no-break space inside each. Straight " doesn’t belong in a French book. For a quotation inside a quotation, the OQLF uses English double marks, then single: « Il a crié “au feu” en sortant. ».

Punctuation goes inside if it belongs to the quoted words, outside if it belongs to the sentence around them. A quoted sentence at the end keeps its full stop inside, and no second one follows: Elle affirma : « Je suis à peu près d’accord. ». Moved to the start, it loses it: « Je suis à peu près d’accord », affirma-t-elle. Both of those examples are the OQLF’s own.

Dialogue

French dialogue has no quotation marks around each line. A new speaker gets a new paragraph and a dash. The Lexique’s usual pattern, illustrated with a passage from La Bruyère (shortened here), opens the whole exchange with a guillemet and closes it at the end:

« Ma vue s’affaiblit, dit Irène.
– Prenez des lunettes, dit Esculape.
– Je m’affaiblis moi-même, continue-t-elle […].
– C’est, dit le dieu, que vous vieillissez. »

The OQLF describes those outer guillemets as optional, and gives dashes alone as equally correct. French novels do both.

Things to notice, since they’re what an English-trained hand gets wrong:

• The speech tag stays in the line. dit Irène needs no dash or closing mark, and the line just carries on.
• There’s no dash for the first speaker if you’ve opened with a guillemet.
• A long speech over several paragraphs gets a fresh « at the start of each one after the first. The Lexique and the OQLF agree, though the OQLF notes some works prefer other ways.
• Which dash. The OQLF’s examples use the en dash –. Many French books use the longer —. Choose one and don’t change partway.

Capitals Keep Their Accents

Write À, É, Ç. The Académie française says that “l’accent a pleine valeur orthographique”, and that good typography uses accented capitals systematically, including the preposition À. The tréma and the cedilla count too. The Lexique’s example is a good one: without accents, ENFANTS LEGITIMES and ENFANTS LÉGITIMÉS of Louis XIV can’t be told apart, and the difference mattered a great deal to them.

Check that your font has these glyphs, including Œ, before you set a whole book in it. Our guide to formatting for KDP has more on choosing and embedding fonts.

The Ellipsis

Always three points, says the Lexique, never four or two. No space before it in the middle or at the end of a sentence, and a normal space after, unless a comma, question mark or exclamation mark follows (OQLF). If it replaces the start of a text, a space follows; if it stands for a single word, a space on either side.

Two faults to look for. etc. never takes an ellipsis, since both mean the same thing. And a cut you’ve made in someone else’s quotation goes in square brackets, […], so it isn’t mistaken for the author’s own pause.

Numbers

In a novel, numbers are mostly written out. The OQLF notes this is often the case in literary texts: trois cents marches, à vingt-deux ans.

When you do use figures, the differences from English matter:

• Thousands are grouped in threes with a no-break space, never a comma: 2 782 320.
• The decimal sign is a comma: 3,14.
• Years and numbers that act as labels take no space: 1789. The Lexique sets numbers used as identifiers in solid figures.
• Percentages and units take a no-break space: 8 %, 58 kg.
• Ordinals are 1er, 1re, 2e, 3e, with the letters raised where possible. 2ème and 2è are out, according to the Académie and the OQLF.

Quebec and Switzerland

Quebec. The difference that shows is Vraiment? with no space, which is correct in Quebec and a fault in France. The OQLF says this absence of a space before ;, ! and ? is widespread and tending to become a convention. The colon and guillemets keep their no-break space. Set the book for its readers: a French edition and a Quebec edition may differ on this alone.

Switzerland. Swiss sources are less unified than the tables suggest. Typoguide and the Lausanne sheet give narrow spaces throughout, whereas a Swiss education agency’s language guide gives up no-break spaces in principle and prints «La numérisation dans l’éducation», and 10%. We haven’t seen the printed Guide du typographe itself, so we’d go no further than saying practice varies, and that a publisher there will tell you.

Getting It Onto the Page

Some word processors insert no-break spaces by themselves when the document language is French, not always with the width you’d like. Check by showing hidden characters, and search your manuscript for a plain space before ? before you send it anywhere.

Shiro’s editor sets these as you type in a French book: guillemets with no-break spaces, the space before :, ;, ! and ?, and the dialogue dash, and it drops the space before ;, ! and ? in Canadian French. There’s more for writing in French on its own page.

Sources

Read in November 2026: the OQLF’s spacing table, types of spacing, guillemets and quotations; the Académie française’s language questions. We read the Lexique in its 1990 edition, and checked through other references that the 2002 edition keeps the same rule for the colon.

The Questions People Ask

Do you put a space before a colon in French?

Yes. In France and Quebec alike, the colon takes a no-break space before it and a normal space after. The Lexique of the Imprimerie nationale and the Office québécois de la langue française agree on this.

Is the space before a question mark narrow or normal?

In France, the Lexique asks for a narrow no-break space before a semicolon, question mark or exclamation mark. Many writers and programs use an ordinary no-break space instead, because narrow ones were long hard to type. In Quebec, the Office recommends no space at all, or a narrow one if available.

How do you write dialogue in French?

Each change of speaker gets a new line and a dash. The Lexique opens the exchange with a guillemet and closes it with another; the Quebec Office treats those guillemets as optional. A speech tag like “dit-elle” stays inside the line, with no extra dash.

Do French capital letters take accents?

Yes. The Académie française and the Lexique both say to use accented capitals systematically, including the preposition À, because the accent has full spelling value in French.

Last revised November 2026.