You must have written a sentence like “Quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog” once in your life. Such sentences are called pangrams. It is a sentence that uses every letter in the alphabet. The pangram originates from two Greek root words. “Pan” means “all,” and “gram” means “something written.” Together, they mean all written letters!
Writing a pangram may sound easy but that actually is not the case since you can’t throw random words. A pangram has to be a proper and complete sentence. That means it should be perfect grammatically and needs to include a subject and a predicate. As a reminder, a subject is a noun a sentence is about. The predicate tells us something about the subject. So a pangram needs both to be a full sentence.
A “perfect pangram” uses each letter from the alphabet only once.
Uses of Pangrams
Students use pangrams to improve their handwriting. Since pangrams use all the letters, teachers normally assign pangram writing tasks in order to improve the handwriting of the students. Pangrams are very useful for children practicing handwriting and for calligraphers trying a new style.
Many people write pangrams for fun. It’s a lot like solving a puzzle. Pangram writers have to find where each letter can fit in the sentence. It helps to start with a list of words that contain rarely used letters like j, x, and z. Then, they add words with more common letters. Once the writer has a complete sentence, they check for each letter of the alphabet. With all letters present, the pangram is complete!
Some people also use pangrams in their work. People who work in offices sometimes use pangrams to make sure each key of a typewriter or a keyboard worked correctly.
Graphic and Web designers use pangrams to preview all letters of any font. Sometimes designers have to buy fonts and before doing so they preview the fonts using pangrams to check all the letters.
Interesting Examples
