When you were first learning to type, did you try the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?” If so, you’ve encountered at least one pangram.
A pangram, also known as a holoalphabetic sentence, is a line or verse that contains all the letters in the alphabet.
The invention of the pangram dates back to the 19th century, when Western Union used them to test telegram equipment to ensure the machines were accurately and reliably processing all the different letters of the alphabet.
Pangrams became particularly popular with the advent of the typewriter, because they encouraged typists to position their hands in order to reach all the letters. They were more effective than a tongue twister to train aspiring typists.
As computers have all but replaced typewriters, you might have seen a pangram – like the “quick brown fox” – used to display all the letters of a typeface when selecting a different font in a word processor or other design program.
Pangrams aren’t unique to English. They serve the same purpose in virtually any language that uses the Roman alphabet. Logographic writing systems, such as Chinese or Japanese, generally can’t produce a pangram because the vast range of characters is more so used to represent different words instead of single letters.
Crafting a pangram
A pangram isn't just any jumble of words containing the full alphabet. There must be a rhyme and reason to the sentence. While the “quick brown fox” is the most recognizable pangram, it’s not the shortest. All 26 letters are represented in this sentence with 35 characters. The dramatic “Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow” clocks in at 29 characters. The whimsical “The five boxing wizards jump quickly” gets the job done with 31 characters.
A perfect pangram consists of just one of each letter in the alphabet, and it's harder than you might think to do this. One programmer claims he has found all known English language perfect pangrams. One reads: "Crwth vox zaps qi gym fjeld bunk." You'll notice some Celtic and Scandinavian terms, but each of the words in this perfect pangram can be found in the Scrabble dictionary.
In general, longer pangrams tend to allow for more personality – here are a few of our favorites for you to test out the next time you’re upping your typing skills.
Bright vixens jump; dozy fowl quack.
Jinxed wizards pluck ivy from the big quilt.
Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
Crazy Fredrick bought many very exquisite opal jewels.
What can you come up with?