The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Encyclopedia
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...
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...
, that is, a phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
that contains all of the letters of the alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
. It has been used to test typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s and computer keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
s, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet. Owing to its shortness and coherence, it has become widely known.
History
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. 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.'" 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
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
. Early examples of publications which utilized the phrase include Illustrative Shorthand by Linda Bronson (1888), How to Become Expert in Typewriting: A Complete Instructor Designed Especially for the Remington Typewriter (1890), 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". Robert Baden-Powell
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Bt, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB , also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement....
's book Scouting for Boys
Scouting for Boys
Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship is the first book on the Scout Movement, published in 1908. It was written and illustrated by Robert Baden-Powell, its founder...
(1908) uses the phrase as a practice sentence for signalling.
During the 20th century, technicians tested typewriters and teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
s with repeated lines of "THE QUICK BROWN FOX..." sentence.
Usage in typography
This pangram is commonly used to display font samplesSample font displays in other languages
-How Fonts Work in Microsoft Windows:In Windows, the sample text message is stored inside Fontview.EXE, which can be seen when using Font Viewer. In Windows 3.1 or higher, the sentence became The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog...
and for testing computer keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
s.
Usage in computing
Quick Brown Fox was the name of a vendor and word processing software package that ran on the Commodore VIC-20Commodore VIC-20
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET...
and Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
.
Older versions of Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
feature the text if you type in =rand and then hit the enter button. In Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 this message has been replaced with straightforward instructions. However, you can use =rand.old to see the original sentence appear.
On Microsoft Word for Mac 2011, you can simply use =rand and hit enter
Usage in popular culture
Owing to the widespread knowledge of the phrase and its comical nature, many works of art have been developed that pictorially depict the action of a fox jumping over a dog or a related variation of it. Dan SantatDan Santat
Dan Santat is an American author and illustrator, perhaps best known for his children's book The Guild of Geniuses and for creating the Disney Channel animated series The Replacements.-Biography:...
, creator of Disney Channel's The Replacements and children’s book author, has created a cartoon of the pangram on his blog in which he mistakenly replaced "jumps" with "jumped", thereby removing the letter "s" from his phrase.
Other instances of phrase-related artworks include a typography workshop flyer, a widespread clipart image, and a music CD cover. A video of a fox actually jumping over a dog can be found online. The May 9, 2008, issue of John Allen's web-based comic Nest Heads features a child saying the phrase to a sleeping dog, in attempts to arouse him to play. In the Disney movie The Fox and the Hound
The Fox and the Hound (film)
The Fox and the Hound is a 1981 animated feature loosely based on the Daniel P. Mannix novel of the same name, produced by Walt Disney Productions and released in the United States on July 10, 1981...
, there is a scene near the end where the fox is running fast and jumps over the lying-down hound, creating an in-context, non-contrived instance of the phrase. The phrase plays a key role in the plot of the 2001 Mark Dunn
Mark Dunn
Mark 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...
novel Ella Minnow Pea
Ella Minnow Pea
Ella 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....
, 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
Magic: The Gathering
Magic: The Gathering , also known as Magic, is the first collectible trading card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic continues to thrive, with approximately twelve million players as of 2011...
, 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." In the Peanuts comic strip for May 27, 1974, Snoopy, having been entrusted by Lucy to ghostwrite her a biography of Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, only writes on his typewriter “The quick brown fox jumps over the unfortunate dog” because that phrase was all he ever learned to type.
The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
used it as the final line in his essay "The Panda's Thumb of Technology."
The Electric Company
The Electric Company
The Electric Company is an educational American children's television series that was produced by the Children's Television Workshop for PBS in the United States. PBS broadcast 780 episodes over the course of its six seasons from October 25, 1971 to April 15, 1977...
used the phrase in a cartoon in which it appears in typewritten font and is read by a female voice. A small brown fox jumps over a sleeping dog repeatedly until the dog starts becoming annoyed and stops him, then laughs heartily as the fox walks away.
In the 1981 movie Stripes
Stripes (film)
Stripes is a 1981 American comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman, starring Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P. J. Soles, and John Candy. It also featured several actors in their first significant film roles, including John Larroquette, Sean Young, John Diehl, and Judge Reinhold. It was one...
starring Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and John Candy, the misfit platoon on the verge of being forced to repeat basic training wows the General at their graduation ceremony with an impromptu "drill". One of the phrases they use during the drill routine is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog...sir!"
The phrase was used erroneously, with the word "jumped" instead of "jumps", and hence missing the letter s, in a commercial for ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
's SportsCenter
SportsCenter
SportsCenter is a daily sports news television show, and the flagship program of American cable network ESPN since the network launched on September 7, 1979. Originally broadcast only daily, SportsCenter is now shown up to twelve times a day, replaying the day's scores and highlights from major...
in 2009. Jay Harris
Jay Harris (sportscaster)
Jay Harris is an American journalist who has worked for ESPN since February 2003. When he first joined ESPN, he worked primarily on ESPNEWS, but in August 2006, he was named the weekday co-host of the 6pm ET SportsCenter along with Brian Kenny...
types the phrase while using batting weights to aid him to type the phrase faster.
See also
- ETAOIN SHRDLUETAOIN SHRDLUETAOIN SHRDLU is a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing because of a custom of Linotype machine operators. It appeared frequently enough that it became part of the lore of newspapers...
- Filler textFiller textFiller text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter...
- Lorem ipsumLorem ipsumIn publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum[p] is placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout...
- 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...
- 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....