Guillemets

[Author]

I am about to finish Murakami's, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, when I came across a punctuation mark that bewildered me.

A minor character in the story, either a deaf man or one who gestures manually (not specified), relayed his thoughts, in written form, not within the usual quotation marks, but within angle quotes. This is an example:

<...wait a moment.>

The writer then describes the person as presenting a finger (index) to indicate the meaning of the phrase.

Question: In a quotable section (in fiction), are deaf folks, or those who mainly communicate via hand gestures, structured with angled quotes (guillemets) instead of the normal, everyday quotation marks?

Maybe the answer is a yes, but the rules are, in this particular case, flexible and left to the writer's discretion? I wish I had the Chicago Manual handy right now. Grr.

Thanks!

 

[canuck]

Hi Author: Don't know if it's any help but Wikipedia has a page on punctuation under "guillemet" - you've probably already looked there but just thought I'd mention it.