My first experiences of computing took place before the widespread use of graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
Consequently, I use a lot of keyboard* shortcuts.
These can also be used to create individual characters and, if known, represent an alternative such as using a visual character map, such as KCharSelect, the character map on the KDE desktop environment on my Linux machines.

KCharselect with the left-hand guillemet selected
So what’s the keyboard shortcut alternative for French quotation marks?
On Linux, most special characters can be inserted into a text editor or office package using the AltGr key plus one or two other keystrokes. If you have the patience to learn them, they can save a lot of time.
For the left guillemet, AltGr+z produces «.
For the right guillemet, AltGr+x produces ».
As you can see, it’s a lot quicker than using a GUI-based alternative.
* = I’ve always used a standard EN-GB keyboard layout.
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