The mechanical typewriters of our grandparents had to be tested to make sure that every key was working fine. So the following sentence was developed: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.
It is an “English language pangram”, which means that it contains all letters of the alphabet, and has been used by generations of keyboard testers and touch-typing students.
Nowadays, the sentence it is still widely used by font publishers to display all letters of each font type. Microsoft even added the function “rand()” in Word 2003 to display the sentence (it is “rand.old()” in newer versions).
There are two interesting facts about this sentence:
The original sentence, as published in 1885 in the The Michigan School Moderator, was actually “A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”, which is 2 letters shorter.
Since then, a shorter similar sentence has been found. It has only 39 letters, so 4 less than the one in use. It is “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs“.
Anyway, it’s probably a bit late to convince font publishers to switch to a shorter sentence, so the quick brown fox can keep jumping without fear!
Shashi Tharoor has a way with words. Be it the Oxford Union debate or his non-fiction prose, the former UN official and member of India's parliament can certainly stimulate and provoke with words.
On Sunday afternoon, Tharoor chose a new playground: Facebook.
He took on the age-old pangram 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' (32 letters) and challenged it with a new, shorter one. A pangram is a sentence that contains all 26 alphabets of the English language.
Tharoor mentioned 'Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs', containing 31 letters, and 'How quickly daft jumping zebras vex', having 30 letters, oblivious to the fact that further shorter ones exist too.
Sample this list.
'Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.' That's 29 letters.
'Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.' That's 28.
And then you have the most perfect pangram. 26 letters.
'Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.'
Tharoor, meanwhile, continued his pursuits on Twitter. One user tweaked the old 32-lettered one to make it shorter.
Tweet may have been deleted (opens in a new tab)
The Indian writer-turned-politician's Sunday occupation invited some interesting reactions.
Credit: facebook screengrab
Credit: FACEBOOK SCREENGRAB
Credit: FACEBOOK SCREENGRAB
Credit: FACEBOOK SCREENGRAB
Any new pangrams, yougaiz?