A French printer named Morel used a comma in the outer margin to indicate a quoted line about 1550.

About a century later another Frenchman, Menage, introduced a mark ("") resembling a double parenthesis but shorter.

These marks were cast on the middle of the type body so that they could be reversed for use at either the beginning or the end of a quotation.

The French have retained these signs as their quotation marks ever since.
When the English adopted the use of quotation marks, they did not take over the French marks, but substituted two inverted commas at the beginning and two apostrophes at the end of the quoted paragraph.

These marks are typographically unsatisfactory.