Lipogram
Encyclopedia
A lipogram is a kind of constrained writing
or word game
consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E
", the most common letter in the English language
.
Writing a lipogram is a trivial task for uncommon letters like "Z
", "J
", or "X
", but it is much more difficult for common letters like "E
", "T
" or "A
". Writing this way, the author must omit many ordinary words. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose.
A pangrammatic lipogram or lipogrammatic pangram
is a text that uses every letter of the alphabet except one, e.g. "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
", which omits "S."
's novel Gadsby
(1939), which has over 50,000 words but not a single letter "E". Wright's self-imposed rule excluded such common English words as "the" and "he", plurals in "-es", past tenses in "-ed", and even abbreviations like "Mr." (for "Mister") or "Bob" (for "Robert"). Yet the narration flows fairly smoothly, and the book was praised by critics for its literary merits.
However, Wright was not the first lipogram writer. Indeed, he was motivated to write Gadsby by an earlier four-stanza
lipogrammatic poem of another author.
Even earlier, Spanish playwright
Enrique Jardiel Poncela
published five short stories between 1926 and 1927, each one omitting a vowel; the best known are "El Chofer Nuevo" ("The new Driver"), without the letter "A", and "Un marido sin vocación" ("A Vocationless Husband"), without the "E".
Interest in lipograms was rekindled by Georges Perec
's novel La Disparition (1969), openly inspired by Wright's Gadsby, and its English translation A Void by Gilbert Adair
. Both works are missing the letter "E", which is the most common letter in French
as well as in English. A Spanish
translation instead omits the letter A, the most common letter in that language. Perec subsequently wrote Les revenentes (1972), a novel that uses no vowels except for "E". Perec was a member of Oulipo
, a group of French authors who adopted a variety of constraints in their work.
Constrained writing
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form....
or word game
Word game
Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...
consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E
E
E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
", the most common letter in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
Writing a lipogram is a trivial task for uncommon letters like "Z
Z
Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
", "J
J
Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
", or "X
X
X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic...
", but it is much more difficult for common letters like "E
E
E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
", "T
T
T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...
" or "A
A
A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
". Writing this way, the author must omit many ordinary words. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose.
A pangrammatic lipogram or lipogrammatic pangram
Pangram
A pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...
is a text that uses every letter of the alphabet except one, e.g. "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram, that is, a phrase that contains all of the letters of the alphabet. It has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet...
", which omits "S."
History
One of the earliest and most remarkable examples of lipogram is Ernest Vincent WrightErnest Vincent Wright
Ernest Vincent Wright was an American author known for his book Gadsby, a 50,000 word novel which, except for the introduction and a note at the end, did not use the letter "e".-Biography:...
's novel Gadsby
Gadsby (novel)
Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E" is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized thanks to the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth group he organizes.The novel is written...
(1939), which has over 50,000 words but not a single letter "E". Wright's self-imposed rule excluded such common English words as "the" and "he", plurals in "-es", past tenses in "-ed", and even abbreviations like "Mr." (for "Mister") or "Bob" (for "Robert"). Yet the narration flows fairly smoothly, and the book was praised by critics for its literary merits.
However, Wright was not the first lipogram writer. Indeed, he was motivated to write Gadsby by an earlier four-stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
lipogrammatic poem of another author.
Even earlier, Spanish playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Enrique Jardiel Poncela
Enrique Jardiel Poncela
Enrique Jardiel Poncela was a Spanish playwright and novelist who wrote mostly humorous works....
published five short stories between 1926 and 1927, each one omitting a vowel; the best known are "El Chofer Nuevo" ("The new Driver"), without the letter "A", and "Un marido sin vocación" ("A Vocationless Husband"), without the "E".
Interest in lipograms was rekindled by Georges Perec
Georges Perec
Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
's novel La Disparition (1969), openly inspired by Wright's Gadsby, and its English translation A Void by Gilbert Adair
Gilbert Adair
Gilbert Adair is a Scottish author, film critic and journalist. He won the Author's Club First Novel Award in 1988 for his novel The Holy Innocents. In 1995 he won the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for his book A Void, which is a translation of the French book La Disparition by Georges Perec...
. Both works are missing the letter "E", which is the most common letter in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
as well as in English. A Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
translation instead omits the letter A, the most common letter in that language. Perec subsequently wrote Les revenentes (1972), a novel that uses no vowels except for "E". Perec was a member of Oulipo
Oulipo
Oulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...
, a group of French authors who adopted a variety of constraints in their work.
More examples
After Perec's work, many other authors have taken to write under these (or even stronger) constraints. To cite some examples:- Adam Adams' novel Toxic Panda is an armchair treasure hunt excluding the letter E throughout the book and the embedded puzzles.
- In Walter AbishWalter AbishWalter Abish is an Austrian-American author of experimental novels and short stories.-Biography:Abish was born in Vienna, Austria to Adolph and Frieda . At a young age, his family fled from the Nazis, traveling first to Italy and Nice before settling in Shanghai from 1940 to 1949...
's novel Alphabetical AfricaAlphabetical AfricaAlphabetical Africa is a constrained writing experiment by Walter Abish. It is written in the form of a novel.A paperback edition was issued in New York by New Directions Publishing Corporation in 1974 with ISBN 0-8112-0533-9...
(1974) the first chapter consists solely of words beginning with "A". Chapter two also permits words beginning with "B" and so on, until at chapter 26, Abish allows himself to use words beginning with any letter at all. For the next 25 chapters, he reverses the process. - Gyles BrandrethGyles BrandrethGyles Daubeney Brandreth is a British writer, broadcaster and former Conservative Member of Parliament and junior minister.-Early life:...
re-wrote some of Shakespeare's works as lipograms: HamletHamletThe Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
without the letter "I" (e.g., "To be or not to be, that's the query"); MacbethMacbethThe Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
without "A" or "E"; Twelfth Night without "O" or "L"; OthelloOthelloThe Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
without "O". In 1985 he also wrote the following poem, where each stanza is a lipogrammatic pangram (using every letter of the alphabet except "E").
Bold Nassan quits his caravan,
A hazy mountain grot to scan;
Climbs jaggy rocks to find his way,
Doth tax his sight, but far doth stray.
Not work of man, nor sport of child
Finds Nassan on this mazy wild;
Lax grow his joints, limbs toil in vain—
Poor wight! why didst thou quit that plain?
Vainly for succour Nassan calls;
Know, Zillah, that thy Nassan falls;
But prowling wolf and fox may joy
To quarry on thy Arab boy.
- In Christian BökChristian BökChristian Bök is an experimental Canadian poet. He is the author of Eunoia, which won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, and which has been said to be "Canada's best-selling poetry book ever."-Life:...
's novel EunoiaEunoia (book)Eunoia is the title of a set of univocalics by Canadian poet Christian Bök, which consists of chapters written using words limited to a single vowel...
(2001), each chapter is restricted to a single vowel, missing four of the five vowels. For example the fourth chapter does not contain the letters "A", "E", "I" or "U". A typical sentence from this chapter is "Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post-docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth." Lipogrammatic writing which uses only one vowel has been called univocalicUnivocalicA univocalic is a type of constrained writing that uses only one vowel-letter . It can thus be considered a lipogram, excluding the other four vowels....
. - Cipher and Poverty (The Book of Nothing), a book by Mike SchertzerMike SchertzerMike Schertzer is a Canadian poet and artist.Schertzer graduated in 1987 from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc...
(1998), pretends to have been written "by a prisoner whose world had been impoverished to a single utterance... who can find me here in this silence". The poems that follow use only the 4 vowels "A", "E", "I", and "O", and 11 consonants "C", "D", "F", "H", "L", "M", "N", "R", "S", "T", and "W" of this utterance. - Ella Minnow PeaElla Minnow PeaElla Minnow Pea is a novel by Mark Dunn, copyrighted in 2001. The full title of the hardcover version is Ella Minnow Pea: a progressively lipogramatic epistolary fable, while the paperback version is titled Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters....
by Mark DunnMark DunnMark Dunn is an American author and playwright. He studied film at Memphis State University followed by post-graduate work in screenwriting at the University of Texas moving to New York in 1987 where he worked in the New York Public Library whilst writing plays in his free time.Among the...
(2001) is described as a "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable": the plot of the story deals with a small country which begins to outlaw the use of various letters, and as each letter is outlawed within the story, it is (for the most part) no longer used in the text of the novel. It is not purely lipogrammatic, however, because the outlawed letters do appear in the text proper from time to time (the characters being penalized with banishment for their use) and when the plot requires a search for pangramPangramA pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...
sentences, all twenty-six letters are obviously in use. Also, late in the text, the author begins using letters serving as homophoneHomophoneA homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
s for the omitted letters (i.e. "PH" in place of an "F", "G" in place of "C"), which some might argue is cheating. - In SwedenSwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
a form of lipogram was developed out of necessity at the Linköping UniversityLinköping UniversityLinköping University is a state university in Linköping, Sweden. Linköping University was granted full university status in 1975 and is now one of Sweden's larger academic institutions. Education, research and PhD training are the mission of four faculties: Arts and Sciences, Educational...
. Because files were shared and moved between computerComputerA computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
platforms where the internal representation of the characters "Å", "Ä", "Ö", "å", "ä", and "ö" (all moderately common vowels) were different, the tradition to write comments in source code without using those characters emerged. Some also used this as a pastime to write texts using this restriction. - Eszperente is a lipogrammatic form of HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
in which no vowels can be used other than "E". This task is eased somewhat as "E" is a common vowel in Hungarian. In fact the letter e can denote two similar but distinct vowels. There are poems and even some books written in Eszperente, mostly for children. - Zanzō ni Kuchibeni o (1989) by Yasutaka TsutsuiYasutaka Tsutsuiis a Japanese novelist, science fiction author, and actor. Along with Shinichi Hoshi and Sakyo Komatsu, he is one of the most famous science fiction writers in Japan. His Yumenokizaka bunkiten won the Tanizaki Prize in 1987. He has also won the 1981 Izumi Kyoka award, the 1989 Kawabata Yasunari...
is a lipogrammatic novel in Japanese languageJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. The first chapter is written without あ, and usable syllables are decreasing as the story advances. In the last chapter, the last syllable ん vanishes and the story is closed. - RussianRussiansThe Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
contemporary author Sergei Dovlatov does not use two words that start with the same letter in a single sentence. - In India, Charu Nivedita is famous for lipogrammatic novels. His novel, Zero degreeZero degreeZero Degree is a postmodern novel written in 1998 by Tamil author Charu Nivedita, later translated into Malayalam and English.The novel uses a non-linear narrative structure and often shockingly sexual and/or violent content, jumping between phone sex conversations, torture scenes , love poems,...
is an attempt for the same. Sources claim that his new novel, exile is also lipogrammatic.
See also
- The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable by Mary GodolphinLucy AikinLucy Aikin , born at Warrington, England into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians, was a historical writer.-Family and education:...
(pseudonym of Lucy Aikin) - Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable by Mary GodolphinLucy AikinLucy Aikin , born at Warrington, England into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians, was a historical writer.-Family and education:...
- Lives of the Presidents Told in Words of One Syllable by Jean S. Remy