Oh that quick brown fox...

Factual Questions
1

I am looking for a short piece of english text (a few paragraphs) that contains all the letters in the English language. The trick is that I want it to contain all the capitals and all the lowercase letters without the text looking contrived or having weird capitalization - basically I need it to have 26 words that are either proper nouns, “I” or first words in a sentence in addition to all the lower case letters used (which is trivial). If the text sounds good or makes any sort of sense that’s a bonus.

Anything like that in existence?

What do calligraphers use to practice a new cursive font?

Much obliged,

  • G
2

Well, from your topic I assume you know about “The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog” which is supposed to include most of the letters in the English language. I read about a simple code based on that phrase in Boys Life a few years back.

3

Now is the time for all quick brown foxes to jump over the lazy dog!

4

There’s a whole list of pangrams in English here.

5

It’s “jumps,” not “jumped.” This way it contains all the letters.

6

I am specifically looking for text that includes all letters, lowercase and uppercase. Since the occurence of capitalized words seems to be around 1 in 10+/-4 in normal english writing, I’d expect it to be at least 250 words.

7

I’m sure we could come up with something

Author Brian Chambers’ work “Eminent Domain & God” was denounced by Frank Hall as…

etc

8

Why not a simple list of nations? Well, you might have to include Xanadu, but no one will notice…

9

Xhosa.

10

This narrative poem by the splendidly named Alaric Watts may be what you’re looking for: he even convincingly gets the X’s in there…

An Austrian army, awfully arrayed
Boldly by battery beseiged Belgrade.

11

“Zounds!” yelps Xavier, when vicious ugly tiger springs. Runs, quickly prays… observes nearby musket. Loads, kneels (jelly in his guts), fires - expertly dispatches cat! Becomes atheist.

12

Aleuts ably adumbrate,
Bantus blithely bill.
Costa Ricans copulate,
Danes demurely drill.

Eskimoes extrapolate,
Frenchmen faintly flop.
Greenlanders gesticulate,
Hopi humbly hop.

Inuit insinuate,
Japanese just jolt.
Khao-San kindly kleptocrate,
Mauritians merely moult.

New Zealanders negotiate,
Ostrogoths oppress.
Peruvians prevaricate,
Queenslanders quiesce.

Russians royally rusticate,
Scotsmen slowly snooze.
Tongans tintinabulate,
Uighurs underuse.

Venetians vilely ventilate,
Welshmen weakly wield.
Xhosa xenopophagate,
Yanomami yield.

Zulus do none of these things.

13

Mmm, for some reason the “J” line is missing:

14

I’ve just realised that the alphabet has an L between the K and the M…

15

I think Watts is using poetic licence here and availing himself of the historical fact that i and j were originally the same letter.

16

So the line was originally “Just Jesus, jnstant jnnocence jnstill!” :slight_smile:

All this reminded me of an old Lampoon cartoon that had the Quick Brown Fox jumping over the Lazy Dog, the dog then casually says to the puzzled Fox:

“Oh, while you’re at it - Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”

17

What about:

“Psst, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
“What?”
“I said, THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG!”
“Oh.”

18

Duh, Texas. :smiley:

19

XV nymphs beg quick fjord waltz.

20

Warm plucky GHQ jinx, fez to BVD’s.