Pangram is a definition by Jack Rusher, published here Tuesday, May 27, 2003. It is part of Glossary.
A pangram contains every letter of the alphabet. The word comes from the Greek words pan (all) and gramma (letter).
Graphic designers encounter many pangrams — they are often used as font exemplars — the most famous of which, “the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog”, should be quite familiar.
My interest in pangrams grew out of my study of old copybooks, of which I’ve seen a great many while attempting to improve my handwriting. Some pangrams I’ve put into service include:
- Playing jazz vibe chords excites my wife quickly;
- Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs;
- The five boxing wizards jump quickly; and
- Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex.
I’ve also learnt one French pangram, “Zoe ma grande fille veut que je boive ce whisky dont je ne veux pas.” Which translates, more or less, to “Zoe, my grand daughter, wants me to drink this whiskey that I don’t want.”
There are more pangrams here, here and here.
There’s also a wonderful piece on the intersection of mathematics, computer science and pangrams by Lee Sallows, who’s mentioned in several of Douglas R. Hofstadter’s books.
Update: A reader called Adam Rice from crossroads.net writes the following:
You may be interested to know that there is a pangram in Japanese known as the iroha that a) manages to use each kana character exactly once; b) is a Buddhist poem; c) is universally known, so that it is used as an alternative to alphabetical ordering in some cases in Japan — outlines often use i-ro-ha ordering to enumerate one layer in the hierarchy (if you check into CSS list-styling rules, you'll even find it there).