Humanities › English Pangram (Word Play) Share Flipboard Email Print The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (Yves Adams/Getty Images) English English Grammar An Introduction to Punctuation Writing By Richard Nordquist Richard Nordquist English and Rhetoric Professor Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester B.A., English, State University of New York Dr. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on February 12, 2020 A pangram is a sentence or expression that uses all the letters of the alphabet. Adjective: pangrammatic. Also called a holoalphabetic sentence or an alphabet sentence. The words in a "genuine" pangram (one in which each letter appears only once) are sometimes called non-pattern words. The best known pangram in English is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," a sentence that's often used for touch-typing practice. "Sensewise," says Howard Richler, "pangrams are the antithesis to palindromes. For in palindromes the sense increases with the brevity of the palindromic statement; in pangrams sense usually deteriorates proportionately with brevity" (A Bawdy Language: How a Second-rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top, 1999). Examples Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugsThe five boxing wizards jump quicklyBright vixens jump; dozy fowl quackJackdaws love my big sphinx of quartzJohn quickly extemporized five tow bagsWaltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex BudQuick wafting zephyrs vex bold JimBrown jars prevented the mixture from freezing too quicklyFred specialized in the job of making very quaint wax toysNew job: fix Mr Gluck's hazy TV, PDSixty zippers were quickly picked from the woven jute bagWe promptly judged antique ivory buckles for the next prizeJ.Q. Schwartz flung V.D. Pike my boxViewing quizzical abstracts mixed up hefty jocksFarmer jack realized that big yellow quilts were expensiveMy girl wove six dozen plaid jackets before she quitMy favorite proposal for a 26-letter pangram requires an entire story for comprehension (thanks to Dan Lufkin of Hood College):During World War I, Lawrence's Arab Legion was operating on the southern flank of the Ottoman Empire. Hampered by artillery fire from across a river, Lawrence asked for a volunteer to cross the river at night and locate the enemy guns. An Egyptian soldier stepped forward. The man was assigned to Lawrence's headquarters [G.H.Q. for 'general headquarters'--this becomes important later] and had a reputation for bringing bad luck. But Lawrence decided to send him. The mission was successful and the soldier appeared, at dawn the next morning, at a remote sentry post near the river, dripping wet, shivering, and clad in nothing but his underwear and native regimental headgear. The sentry wired to Lawrence for instructions, and he replied:Warm plucky G.H.Q. jinx, fez to B.V.D.'s (Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus. W. W. Norton, 1992) Pronunciation: PAN-gram Also Known As: holoalphabetic sentence, alphabet sentence Cite this Article Format mla apa chicago Your Citation Nordquist, Richard. "Pangram (Word Play)." ThoughtCo, Aug. 26, 2020, thoughtco.com/pangram-word-play-term-1691561. Nordquist, Richard. (2020, August 26). Pangram (Word Play). Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/pangram-word-play-term-1691561 Nordquist, Richard. "Pangram (Word Play)." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/pangram-word-play-term-1691561 (accessed May 30, 2023). copy citation