The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog facts for kids
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a special English sentence. It's called a pangram because it uses every single letter of the alphabet! People often use this sentence for different things, like practicing how to type quickly without looking at the keyboard, testing typewriters or computer keyboards, or showing what different fonts look like. It's super helpful when you need to see all the letters in action.
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Why is This Sentence So Special?
This sentence is famous because it's short and includes every letter from A to Z. This makes it perfect for many uses, especially when you want to check if all letters are working or displayed correctly.
How It Started
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The first time anyone knows this sentence appeared was in a newspaper called The Boston Journal. On February 9, 1885, an article suggested it as a great practice sentence for students learning to write. The original sentence started with "A quick brown fox..." Many other newspapers then printed it. A few years later, around 1888, the version starting with "The" became more common, even though it's a tiny bit longer.
One story says that when the New York Herald newspaper was getting new typewriters, they needed a good sentence for typists to practice with. The old practice sentence they used didn't have all the letters. So, a staff member named Arthur F. Curtis supposedly created the "quick brown fox" sentence to solve this problem!
Growing Popularity
As typewriters became more popular in the late 1800s, the sentence started showing up in typing lesson books. Books like How to Become Expert in Typewriting (1890) and Typewriting Instructor (1892) used it. By the early 1900s, almost everyone knew the sentence. Even Robert Baden-Powell, who started the Scouts, used it in his 1908 book Scouting for Boys as a way to practice sending signals.
This sentence even played a role in history! On August 30, 1963, the very first message sent on the Moscow–Washington hotline (a direct communication line between the USA and Russia) was a test message using a longer version: "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG'S BACK 1234567890". Later, the Russian translators asked what the sentence meant!
Today, this sentence is still used in the annual Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Competition in the U.S., which started in 1991.
How It's Used with Computers
In the computer age, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is still super useful.
- Showing Fonts: It's often used to show what different computer fonts look like, because it displays every letter.
- Testing Keyboards: It helps test if all the keys on a computer keyboard are working correctly.
- Computer Code: In cryptography (the science of secure communication), it's used to test computer programs that encrypt or scramble messages. This makes sure the programs work right with all letters.
- Microsoft Word: If you use Microsoft Word, you can even type a special command (like
=rand.old()
Other Cool Pangrams
While "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is very popular, it's not the shortest sentence that uses every letter. Here are some other examples:
- "Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex." (This one has only 28 letters!)
- "How vexingly quick daft zebras jump!" (30 letters)
- "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs." (32 letters)
Some very clever people have even made "perfect pangrams" that use each letter of the alphabet only once! One example is "Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx."
See also
In Spanish: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog para niños
- Filler text
- Etaoin shrdlu
- Lorem ipsum
- Thousand Character Classic
- Iroha
