How do you dictate punctuation in French?

Say the French name of each mark, not the English one. On a Mac set to French, point d'interrogation gives the question mark, and Apple's French command table lists the question mark under that phrase ¹. The colon comes from deux points in Microsoft's Dictate in Word table ². French quotations use guillemets, « and », not the curly or straight marks of English, and the spacing before the colon is a separate rule you need to check in the output.

The French names for the common marks come from the vendor's table

French dictation uses French phrases, and each vendor publishes its own list. Apple's French Mac table gives point d'interrogation for ? and guillemet ouvrant for the opening guillemet («), with guillemet fermant for the closing one (») ¹. Microsoft's table for Dictate in Word gives deux points for the colon and guillemet gauche, guillemet ouvrant for the left guillemet (« ) ².

The two lists are not the same. Word uses guillemet gauche where Apple uses guillemet ouvrant, and Apple writes the colon phrase with a hyphen, deux-points ³. The difference matters when you dictate in a particular app. Say the phrase in the list for the app you use, and test it once before writing a long text.

Québec spacing puts a non-breaking space before the colon

The Québec language office's spacing table shows the colon (deux-points) with a non-breaking space before it and a normal space after it ⁴. The non-breaking space keeps the colon on the same line as the word before it, so a line break does not split them.

A dictation tool may insert an ordinary space instead, or none. Neither the Apple nor the Microsoft table that this page checked says which space the colon phrase inserts. So after the first colon in a document, look at what the tool inserted, and fix it if needed. Many word processors can insert a non-breaking space with a key combination, and that is the simplest correction after dictation.

Two limits apply to this rule. The OQLF is the language office of Québec, and its table shows Québec practice. For France, the reference is the Imprimerie nationale's typography lexicon. We could not reach that text here, so the width and the exact rule for France are not confirmed on this page. Check the house style of the publisher or employer for which you write.

French quotations use guillemets with spaces inside

Microsoft's French table maps the opening guillemet to the phrase guillemet gauche, guillemet ouvrant and gives the « character ². Apple's French table gives guillemet ouvrant and guillemet fermant for the two guillemets ¹. So a French quotation dictated with the tool's guillemet phrase comes out with « and », which is the usual French form.

The Québec spacing table puts a non-breaking space after the opening guillemet and before the closing one ⁵, so the text reads « Bonjour ». The tool's output may not include those spaces. Check the spacing of the first quotation in each document, and correct it the same way as the colon.

Apple's Mac list adds some marks automatically, and French is on the variant list

Dictée, the French name for Dictation on the Mac, adds some punctuation marks automatically as you dictate in supported languages. Apple's French help page says so in these words: ⁶. The automatic list includes French (Belgium), French (Canada), French (France) and French (Switzerland) ⁷.

Automatic marks do not replace the command list. The Apple French table gives no command for an opening question mark, which French does not use, and the automatic marks cover the ordinary sentence end ⁸. A colon, a guillemet or a spacing rule still needs a phrase or a manual check. To switch the automatic marks off, use the Auto-punctuation setting in Keyboard settings ⁸.

What to do with each mark in French

1. Set the dictation language to French for the country you write in, because the command list follows that language. Apple's guide says you can set up several languages and switch between them, but it does not say that one sentence can mix two languages ⁹.
2. Say point d'interrogation at the end of each question. On the Mac, the automatic marks may already add the question mark, so check that you do not get two.
3. Say deux points for the colon, then fix the space before it if the tool inserted a normal one.
4. Say guillemet ouvrant and guillemet fermant for quotations, then check the spaces inside the guillemets.
5. Dictate one test paragraph with a question, a colon and a quotation before you start a document.

Dictation punctuation is a command list, and it needs a spacing check

The phrase decides the mark, but it does not decide the space around the mark. A command list shows which character a phrase inserts, not how close to the word it sits. The spacing rule is therefore a separate check, and it is the part most likely to be wrong in a French text.

The command tables also say nothing about accuracy. A phrase such as point d'interrogation can be listed and still be misheard in a noisy room. Test each phrase in a real sentence. For the English commands, see our guide to dictation punctuation. For the same marks in other languages, see the Spanish dictation punctuation question and the German dictation punctuation question. The full set of languages is in our guide to dictation punctuation commands in other languages. The wider picture of French, German and other European languages is in our guide to speech to text in French, German and more.

If a mark in your French text comes out wrong after the tests above, dictate the word and type the mark yourself, then keep going. A few typed marks cost less than a document with the wrong guillemet in every quotation.