The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram—a phrase that contains all of the letters of the English alphabet. It has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet. Owing to its brevity and coherence, it has become widely known.
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History [edit]
The earliest known appearance of the phrase is from The Michigan School Moderator, a journal that provided teachers with education-related news and suggestions for lessons.[1] In an article titled "Interesting Notes" in the March 14, 1885 issue, the phrase is given as a suggestion for writing practice: "The following sentence makes a good copy for practice, as it contains every letter of the alphabet: 'A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'"[2] Note that the phrase in this case begins with the word "A" rather than "The". Several other early sources also use this variation.
As the use of typewriters grew in the late 19th century, the phrase began appearing in typing and stenography lesson books as a practice sentence. Early examples of publications which utilized the phrase include Illustrative Shorthand by Linda Bronson (1888),[3] How to Become Expert in Typewriting: A Complete Instructor Designed Especially for the Remington Typewriter (1890),[4] and Typewriting Instructor and Stenographer's Hand-book (1892). By the turn of the 20th century, the phrase had become widely known. In the January 10, 1903, issue of Pitman's Phonetic Journal, it is referred to as "the well known memorized typing line embracing all the letters of the alphabet".[5] Robert Baden-Powell's book Scouting for Boys (1908) uses the phrase as a practice sentence for signalling.[6]
During the 20th century, technicians tested typewriters and teleprinters with repeated lines of "THE QUICK BROWN FOX..." sentence.[7]
Usage in typography [edit]
This pangram is commonly used to display font samples and for testing computer keyboards.
Examples of how the phrase is used in font display
Usage in computing [edit]
Quick Brown Fox was the name of a vendor and word processing software package that ran on the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64.
Microsoft Word has a command to auto-type the sentence, in versions up to Office 2003, using the command =rand(), and in Office 2007 and later using the command =rand.old().[8]
Usage in popular culture [edit]
The phrase plays a key role in the plot of the 2001 Mark Dunn novel Ella Minnow Pea, which is set in a fictitious island nation supposed to be the home of the phrase's originator.
Close variations are often created when the phrase is used in the arts. In the card game Magic: The Gathering, a "joke card" from the Unhinged series was created with a game-related variation of the phrase, "The quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf."[9]
In the Peanuts comic strip for May 27, 1974, Snoopy, having been entrusted by Lucy to ghostwrite her a biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, only writes on his typewriter “The quick brown fox jumps over the unfortunate dog”[citation needed][10] because that phrase was all he ever learned to type.
The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould used it as the final line in his essay "The Panda's Thumb of Technology."[11]
The BBC television programme AlphaBlocks, which is an early literacy program, created a song about this phrase. The show features animated block-like alphabet creatures sounding out letters and words and lighting up as they build the phrase letter by letter. At the end they repeat the phrase while a fox jumps over a dog and they sing it faster and faster, with a few variations.[12]
In the epilogue of the Stephen King novella The Sun Dog, the protagonist types a variation of the phrase into his new computer but the printed version is a frightening message regarding the supernatural dog he believed he had trapped.
In The Simpsons episode, "Adventures in Baby-Getting", Lisa leaves behind mysterious pangrams that Bart, Principal Skinner, and Milhouse track down to find out that Lisa has been taking cursive lessons from Skinner's mentor.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ "Growing Up in Michigan, 1880-1895: One-Room School Lessons - Lesson Plan". Teachers' Stuff from the Michigan Historical Museum. State of Michigan. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
- ^ "Interesting Notes". The Michigan School Moderator (Grand Rapids, Michigan) 5 (26): 514. March 14, 1885.
- ^ Bronson, Linda Pennington (1888). Illustrative Shorthand. San Francisco.
- ^ Barnes, Lovisa Ellen (1890). How to Become Expert in Typewriting.
- ^ "The Fox Typewriter". Pitman's Phonetic Journal. January 10, 1903.
- ^ Baden-Powell, Robert (1908). Scouting for Boys. London: Pearson. ISBN 0-665-98794-3.
- ^ Foxing (second paragraph from the end)
- ^ kb212251 Microsoft support
- ^ Now I Know My ABC's, Gatherer
- ^ Alt.comics.peanuts, Google Groups
- ^ Gould, Stephen Jay (1987). "The Panda's Thumb of Technology." Natural History 96 (1): 14-23; Reprinted in Bully for Brontosaurus. New York: W.W. Norton. 1992, pp. 59-75.
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/watch-alphablocks-in-action-as-the-quick-brown-fox-jumps-over-the-lazy-dog/11244.html Only accessible from IP addresses in the UK.
External links [edit]
- Sentences that contain all letters commonly used in a language
- Pangrams in Russian, English and some other languages
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (literally)
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