Which animals do typographers and calligraphers like? Foxes and dogs! Why? I hear you ask. In this Ed’s Elevenses blog post, we will look at why these quadrupeds (i.e., four-legged animals) have anything to do with typography and calligraphy. Hint: We are going to find out what pangrams are.
I don’t know about you, but I have been through a compulsive “free fonts downloading” phase during my teens when rewritable CDs were fashionable. On the webpages for downloading fonts, the artists who designed them would usually display all available letters, numbers, and sometimes even symbols in a given typeset, so that internet users could see what a font looked like before downloading it.
Some webpages would display A to Z alphabetically, while some others would use the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” instead.
This is a classic example of a pangram—a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet, which enables font designers to illustrate their work from A to Z in a more natural way.
Let’s look at some examples:
✅ The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
✅ Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
✅ My girl wove six dozen plaid jackets before she quit.
✅ Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
[For readers who are too young, Fax = Facsimile. Think email, but with a printer-like machine and actual pieces of paper involved.]
As you can see from the above examples, it actually contains recurring alphabets such as the o’s and a few e’s, which does not matter in an ordinary pangram; however, when it comes to perfect pangrams in English, only 26 letters can be used, which means A to Z once.
For example:
✅ GQ’s oft lucky whiz Dr J, ex-NBA MVP.
= Retired NBA player, Julius Erving (also known as Dr J), is a four-time Most Valuable Player award recipient, who also appeared on the cover of GQ magazine once.
You may notice that in the above pangram, abbreviations are used in order to keep the sentence 26 letters long. It is indeed quite difficult to create perfect pangrams in English without using abbreviations, uncommon spelling, and loan words:
✅ Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz.
= Symbolic drawings on the glaciated valley walls above the narrow inlet of the sea annoyed the eccentric person.
Producing Personal Pangrams
Creating pangrams is a both fun and challenging activity. The trickiest part is to use as few letters as possible while still making sense to others. During this home-bound period due to COVID, why not work your mind with brain-teasers and make your own pangrams? Start with ordinary ones then move to perfect pangrams, and try not to use any foreign words!
Edison Tam MA MCIL CL is a Translator, Proofreader, and Copyeditor (zh-hk/en) who works with students, independent non-fiction writers, academic researchers, and clients from businesses and organisations of all sizes.
He is Chartered Linguist and Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), and has undergone wide-ranging academic training in Business, Modern Languages, and Applied Linguistics in Hong Kong, London, and Barcelona.
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