The Quick Brown Fox...........

[MathGirl]

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

The above sentence has long been the standard to which other sentences containing all 26 letters of the alphabet are compared. Over the centuries, numerous attempts have been made to fabricate an alphabetically complete English sentence shorter than 36 letters. These essays have, without exception, ended in failure; some in outright disaster. To wit:

[John Brady, give me a black walnut box of quite small size] "Shit! That warn't even closte. Best I ever done, an' it still over farty letters. Fuggit! I jist cain't take no mora this ..... BANG .... flop ........."

[Six big devils from Japan quickly forgot how to waltz] "Here I sit, Yoshii san, day after day, month after month ... never have I approached the magic number of 36. I spit on those imperialist lime-sucking round eyed bastards and their Yankee lapdogs with their pitiful language. No longer can I endure. Nakigura san, please hand me the seppuku knife and place the intestine receptacle before me. Sayonara; I go to my ancestors. Banzai! Urggghhh......"

Then, one fateful afternoon:

[Zelda quickly wove eight nubby flax jumpers] "By all that's holy, Cosgrove! That was my best, and it is still 37 letters. I tell you it cannot be done. My life's work has been wasted. My career is over. I have totally, utterly failed. I shall retire, devastated, to the country and live out my remaining years a ruined, shattered husk of a man."

"Cosgrove, let us make preparations to depart immediately. I shall never scale the trishexadecimal Everest for which I have striven lo these many years, and I wish to leave soonest. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs ......... Pack my ....... [PACK MY BOX WITH FIVE DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS] Great Caesar's Ghost, Cosgrove! Did you hear that? My .. my life is complete .... Urethra!!!"

*Omnialphabetical sentences from "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn. MacAdam/Cage, 2001
MG

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

Rhinoh-oh, that really made me laugh. Just perfect (sorry, Maths).

Perdita

 

[Guest]

 

[Wills]

She's only doing it to distract us. I seem to remember her saying we were NaNo mad, now she's seen the word scores...

Will's

PS. It is beautiful MG, thanks.

 

[oggbashan]

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs

Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex


Both from "The Oxford Guide to Word Games"

Og

 

[Guest]

Ogg, dearest, mercy! I cannot read more than the basic (or basest) words now. I think I'm forgetting how to read.

p (the minimal me)

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs

Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex


Both from "The Oxford Guide to Word Games"

Og

Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q. [26]

Glum Schwartzkopf vex'd by NJ IQ. [26]

Take that!

 

[OldnotDead]

Well, MG,

Once again you have added to the useless amount of knowledge with which I rattle along each day. I never knew that "The Quick Brown's . . ." claim to fame was the brevity of the sentence. I always thought it had to do with the groupings of the letters, helping to test manual typewriter mechanisms back when jammed keys were actually a concern.

Thanks . . .
I think

 

[AngeloMichael]

Sorry to add to your woes...

or to Mr. Dunn's, or whoever wrote that hyperbolic disquisition above but...

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

The above sentence has long been the standard to which other sentences containing all 26 letters of the alphabet are compared. Over the centuries, numerous attempts have been made to fabricate an alphabetically complete English sentence shorter than 36 letters. These essays have, without exception, ended in failure; some in outright disaster.

There is no letter "s" in that sentence. So it isn't truly omnialphabetical. Furthermore, if you change the tense of the sentence from past to present, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." you do make the sentence omnialphabetical and actually lose a letter, so it's down to 35.

However, all hope is not lost, adding the "s" in another place, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." gains you a letter so you can be tied at 37.

Hope I've been a help and not a hindrance, or atleast a nonentity

 

[Wills]

MG wrote

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

The above sentence has long been the standard to which other sentences containing all 26 letters of the alphabet are compared.

AngloMichael wrote
There is no letter "s" in that sentence.

So MG hood winked us from the very start.

Grrrrr

May be it was a test...

Will's
(I failed)

 

[Quasimodem]

. . ."The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." . . .

Math paraphrased that old typing lesson.

Actually it was: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Which is exactly 36 keystrokes, excluding spaces, but including the period.

Possibly Math sussed typing while still in three-cornered pants -- not me!

That was the only useful skill I learned in highschool

Except necking, and that wasn't really on the curriculum.

 

[AngeloMichael]

Actually it was: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Well that was the first omnialphabetically correct example I gave, if you count the period as a keystroke it does come out to 36, but then if you count the period in the original sentence it makes that one 37.

 

[Quasimodem]

Well that was the first omnialphabetically correct example I gave, if you count the period as a keystroke it does come out to 36, but then if you count the period in the original sentence it makes that one 37.

Math just 'remembered' it in the wrong tense.

Don't you get tense about it, too!

 

[AngeloMichael]

Math just 'remembered' it in the wrong tense.

Don't you get tense about it, too!

Gotcha Quasimodem. Nice pun BTW

No worries here babe, I'm not tense in any tense.

 

[Guest]

 

[Wills]

Is this thread tense or nontense?

Will's

 

[Quasimodem]

Is this thread tense or nontense?
Will's

It's an excerpt from "Tense and Tensibility."
I think it was written by Jane Houston

 

[whispering_surrender]

That was the only useful skill I learned in highschool

Except necking, and that wasn't really on the curriculum.

It wasn't?!? But, but, but....that was the only thing I was good at.....*sigh*

Whisper

 

[MathGirl]

Okay, okay. I flubbed the "s" and there are shorter sentences. "Ella Minnow Pea" is a very cool book for anyone who likes playing with words, which I normally don't. I thought I would share it here and add a little touch of my own.
MG
Ps. Maybe I'd better stick to vocabulary lessons.

 

[Guest]

 

[Quasimodem]

...that was the only thing I was good at...

That was the only subject I studied on weekends for extra credit.

 

[Madame Manga]

The forum software nuked my post, or this would have appeared a little sooner--

"Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz."

That comes with the sample view on a lot of the fonts I download.

MM

 

[Quasimodem]

... "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz."...

Only 32 keystrokes, including the period, not counting spaces.

Except, where is the "f"?

 

[whispering_surrender]

Only 32 keystrokes, including the period, not counting spaces.

Except, where is the "f"?

Quasi....hon...you have way too much time on your hands....

Whisper