A pangram or holoalphabetic sentence is a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and typing.
Origins
The best-known English pangram is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It has been used since at least the late 19th century, was used by Western Union to test Telex/TWX data communication equipment for accuracy and reliability. Pangrams like this are now used by a number of computer programs to display computer typefaces.
Short pangrams
Short pangrams in English are more difficult to devise and tend to use uncommon words and unnatural sentences. Longer pangrams afford more opportunity for humor, cleverness, or thoughtfulness.
The following are examples of pangrams that are shorter than "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" (which has 35 letters) and use standard written English without abbreviations or proper nouns:
"Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex." (28 letters) "Glib jocks quiz nymph to vex dwarf." (28 letters) "Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow." (29 letters) "How quickly daft jumping zebras vex!" (30 letters) "The five boxing wizards jump quickly." (31 letters) "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz." (31 letters) "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs." (32 letters)
Perfect pangrams
A perfect pangram contains every letter of the alphabet only once and can be considered an anagram of the alphabet. The only perfect pangrams of the English alphabet that are known use abbreviations or other non-dictionary words, such as "Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx", or use words so obscure that the phrase is hard to understand, such as "Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz", in which is a loan word from the Welsh language meaning a steep-sided glaciated valley, and vext is an uncommon way to spell vexed. An easier one to remember may be "Q P Zarck flung J V Dwith my boxes." The letters in the names may be rearranged to create different pangrams.
Other writing systems may present more options: The Iroha is a well-known perfect pangram of the Japanese syllabary, while the Hanacaraka is a perfect pangram for the Javanese script and is commonly used to order its letters in sequence.
Other languages using the Latin script
Whereas the English language uses all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet in native and naturalized words, many other languages using the same alphabet do not. Pangram writers in these languages are forced to choose between only using those letters found in native words or incorporating exotic loanwords into their pangrams. Some words, such as the Gaelic-derived whisk(e)y, which has been borrowed by many languages and uses the letters k, w and y, are a frequent fixture of many foreign pangrams.
There are also languages that also use other Latin characters that do not appear in the traditional 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. This differs further from English pangrams, with letters such as ç, ä, and š.
Azeri ("Zəfər, take your jacket and cap, it will be very cold tonight") is a pangram that contains all 32 letters from the Azeri alphabet.
Czech ("A horse that was too yellow moaned devilish odes") is the most commonly used one, especially to test alphabet support with fonts. This sentence includes all Czech letters with diacritics, but not all basic letters. To include all basic letters, including letters that only occur in loanwords (g, q, w, x), this one is used: ("May the sinful saxophones of devils echo through the hall with dreadful melodies of waltz, tango and quickstep.").
Danish ("Tall shy groom won naughty sexquiz on wc") A perfect pangram, using every letter exactly once (Including the more unusual letters as q, w, and x, and including the Danish æ, ø, and å).
Dutch ("Dad's wise lynx piously looked at the sizable aqueduct.")
Esperanto ("Maybe every quasi-fitting bungle-choir makes a human type happy.") ("According to Ludwig Zamenhof, fresh Czech food with spices tastes good.")
Ewe ("Have a nice birthday tonight, it's been a long time no see, it's been a while since we were in school. Good afternoon, yes, see you again at twelve o'clock in the morning.") is a two-part pangram consisting of a statement and response.