lipogram

Lasus of Hermione, who lived during the second half of the sixth century BCE, is the most ancient author of a lipogram. This makes the lipogram, according to Quintus Curtius Rufus, "the most ancient systematic artifice of Western literature".Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature. p. 100 University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}} Lasus did not like the sigma, and excluded it from one of his poems, entitled Ode to the Centaurs, of which nothing remains; as well as a Hymn to Demeter, of which the first verse remains:

{{verse transliteration-translation

|lang=grc

|originalHeading = Original

|Δάματρα μέλπω Κόραν τε Κλυμένοι᾽ ἄλοχον

μελιβόαν ὕμνον ἀναγνέων

Αἰολίδ᾽ ἂμ βαρύβρομον ἁρμονίαν

|transliterationHeading = Transliteration

|Dámatra mélpô Kóran te Klyménoi᾽ álochon

melibóan hýmnon anagnéôn

Aiolíd᾽ ám barýbromon harmonían

|translationHeading = English translation

|I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed [Hades]

Lifting forth a gentle-voiced hymn

In the deep-toned Aeolian mode.Athen., 14.624e–f, and see 10.455c–d}}

The Greek poets from late antiquity Nestor of Laranda and Tryphiodorus wrote lipogrammatic adaptations of the Homeric poems: Nestor composed an Iliad, which was followed by Tryphiodorus' Odyssey.{{Citation| last1=Swain| first1=S.| last2=Harrison| first2=S.| last3=Elsner| first3=J.| title=Severan Culture| place=Cambridge| year=2007 |isbn=978-0521859820| page=5}} Both Nestor's Iliad and Tryphiodorus' Odyssey were composed of 24 books (like the original Iliad and Odyssey) each book omitting a subsequent letter of the Greek alphabet. Therefore, the first book omitted alpha, the second beta, and so forth.

Twelve centuries after Tryphiodorus wrote his lipogrammatic Odyssey, in 1711, the influential London essayist and journalist Joseph Addison commented on this work (although it had been lost), arguing that "it must have been amusing to see the most elegant word of the language rejected like "a diamond with a flaw in it" if it was tainted by the proscribed letter"."Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p. 101. University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}}

Petrus Riga, a canon of Sainte-Marie de Reims during the 11th century, translated the Bible, and due to its scriptural obscurities called it Aurora. Each canto of the translation was followed by a resume in Lipogrammatic verse; the first canto has no A, the second has no B, and so on. There are two hundred and fifty manuscripts of Petrus Riga's Bible still preserved.Jacques Bens, Claude Berge, and Paul Braffort, History of the Lipogram, pp. 101, 102

There is a tradition of German and Italian lipograms excluding the letter R dating from the seventeenth century until modern times. While some authors excluded other letters, it was the exclusion of the R which ensured the practice of the lipogram continued into modern times. In German especially, the R, while not the most prevalent letter, has a very important grammatical role, as masculine pronouns, etc. in the nominative case include an R (e.g. {{lang|de|er}}, {{lang|de|der}}, {{lang|de|dieser}}, {{lang|de|jener}}, {{lang|de|welcher}})."Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p. 102 University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}} For the Italian authors, it seems to be a profound dislike of the letter R which prompted them to write lipograms excluding this letter (and often only this letter)."Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p. 103 University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}}

There is also a long tradition of vocalic lipograms, in which a vowel (or vowels) is omitted. This tends to be the most difficult form of the lipogram. This practice was developed mainly in Spain by the Portuguese author Alonso de Alcala y Herrera who published an octavo entitled {{lang|es|Varios efectos de amor, en cinco novelas exemplares, y nuevo artificio para escribir prosa y versos sin una de las letras vocales}}. From Spain, the method moved into FranceFor example, this 1853 example omits "A":
{{Cite web|title=Curieux voyage autour du monde de Jacques Arago|url=https://mediterranees.net/voyageurs/jacques_arago/texte.html|access-date=16 January 2023|website=mediterranees.net}} and England.

One of the most remarkable examples of a lipogram is Ernest Vincent Wright's novel Gadsby (1939), which has over 50,000 words but not a single letter E.{{cite web |last=Andrews|first=Dale| title=Constrained Writing | url=http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/02/constrained-writing.html | publisher=SleuthSayers| location=Washington| date=26 February 2013}} Wright's self-imposed rule prohibited such common English words as the and he, plurals ending in -es, past tenses ending in -ed, and even abbreviations like Mr. (since it is short for Mister) or Rob (for Robert). Yet the narration flows fairly smoothly, and the book was praised by critics for its literary merits.{{citation|last= Burton |first= Walt |title= Fifty Thousand Words Minus |work= Oshkosh Daily |date=25 March 1937 |url= http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingPage.aspx?type=glpnews&search=%22wright%2066%20sat%20down%22&img=\\na0014\1347132\8899981_clean.html}}{{citation|last= Bellamy |first= Francis Rufus |journal=Fiction Parade and Golden Book Magazine |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=hVNZAAAAIAAJ&q=gadsby |pages=62 |title=Glancing Through |volume= 2 |issue= 5 |date= March 1936}}

Wright was motivated to write Gadsby by an earlier four-stanza lipogrammatic poem of another author.{{citation|last= Park |first= Ed |url=http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/0232,171103,37208,12.html |title= Egadsby! Ernest Vincent Wright's Machine Dreams |journal= The Village Voice |date= 6 August 2002 }}

Even earlier, Spanish playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela published five short stories between 1926 and 1927, each one omitting a vowel; the best known are "{{lang|es|El Chofer Nuevo}}" ("The new Driver"), without the letter A, and "{{lang|es|Un marido sin vocación}}" ("A Vocationless Husband"), without the E.{{cite web|url=http://perso.wanadoo.es/jardielponcela/documentos/texto1.htm|title=Un marido sin vocación|website=perso.wanadoo.es|access-date=7 September 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304002715/http://perso.wanadoo.es/jardielponcela/documentos/texto1.htm|archive-date=4 March 2016|url-status=dead}}{{Citation |last= Jardiel |first= Enrique |title= Para Leer Mientras Sube el Ascensor |year= 1948 }}

Interest in lipograms was rekindled by Georges Perec's novel {{lang|fr|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 second most common letter in that language. Perec subsequently wrote {{lang|fr|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. {{lang|fr|La Disparition}} is, to date, the longest lipogram in existence.{{citation|last= Sorensen |first= Roy |title= Blanks: Signs of Omission |journal= American Philosophical Quarterly |date= October 1999 }}

Lipograms are sometimes dismissed by academia. "Literary history seems deliberately to ignore writing as practice, as work, as play".Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature, p. 98, University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}}

In his book Rethinking Writing, Roy Harris notes that without the ability to analyse language, the lipogram would be unable to exist. He argues that "the lipogram would be inconceivable unless there were writing systems based on fixed inventories of graphic units, and unless it were possible to classify written texts on the base of the presence or absence of one of those units irrespective of any phonetic value it might have or any function in the script". He then continues on to argue that as the Greeks were able to invent this system of writing as they had a concept of literary notation. Harris then argues that the proof of this knowledge is found in the Greek invention of "a literate game which consists, essentially, in superimposing the structure of a notation on the structure of texts"."Rethinking Writing", pp. 113–114, Continuum. {{ISBN|978-0826479242}}

A pangrammatic lipogram or lipogrammatic pangram uses every letter of the alphabet except one. An example omitting the letter E is:Susan Elkin,Lipograms: The Presence of Absence, p. 15.

{{poemquote|

A jovial swain should not complain

Of any buxom fair

Who mocks his pain and thinks it gain

To quiz his awkward air.

}}

A longer example is "Fate of Nassan", an anonymous poem dating from pre-1870, where each stanza is a lipogrammatic pangram using every letter of the alphabet except E.{{cite web |url= https://archive.org/details/gleaningsforcuri00bomb |title=Gleanings for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature : Bombaugh, Charles C. (Charles Carroll), 1828–1906 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive |first=Charles C. |last=Bombaugh |work=archive.org |year=2013 |access-date=4 August 2013}}

{{poemquote|

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.

}}

Two other pangrammatic lipograms omitting only the letter E are:

{{Blockquote

|text=Now focus your mind vigorously on this paragraph and on all its words. What’s so unusual about it? Don’t just zip through it quickly. Go through it slowly. Tax your brain as much as you can.

}}

{{Blockquote

|text=This is an unusual paragraph. It looks so ordinary and common. You would think that nothing is wrong with it, and, in fact, nothing is. But it is unusual. Can you find it? Just a quick think should do it. It is not taxing. You should find out without any hints. All that you must know to form your solution is right in front of you. I know if you work at it a bit, it will dawn on you. It’s so amazing and so obvious though you can still miss it.

}}

The KJV Bible unintentionally contains two lipogrammatic pangrams: Ezra 7:21 lacks only J, and 1 Chronicles 12:40 lacks only Q.{{Cite book |last=Brandreth |first=Gyles |title=The Joy of Lex |year=1980 |isbn=0-688-03709-7 |pages=237–238|publisher=Morrow }}

Another type of lipogram, which omits every instance of a letter from words that would otherwise contain it, as opposed to finding other words that do not contain the letter, was recorded by Willard R. Espy in 181 Missing O's,{{cite web|url=http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lipogram.htm|title=Do You Know What a Lipogram is?}} based on C. C. Bombaugh's univocalic 'Incontrovertible Facts'.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E17Jzr0a6pAC&q=cc+bombaugh+no+monk%3D&pg=PT192|title=Incontrovertible Facts|isbn=978-0141003962|last1=Crystal|first1=David|year=2002|publisher=Penguin Adult }}

{{poemquote|

N mnk t gd t rb r cg r plt.

N fl s grss t blt Sctch cllps ht.

Frm Dnjn's tps n rnc rlls.

Lgwd, nt Lts, flds prt's bwls.

Bx tps, nt bttms, schl-bys flg fr sprt.

Trps f ld tsspts, ft, t st, cnsrt.

N cl mnsns blw sft n xfrd dns,

rthdx, dg-trt, bk-wrm Slmns.

Bld strgths f ghsts n hrrr shw.

n Lndn shp-frnts n hp-blssms grw.

T crcks f gld n dd lks fr fd.

n sft clth ftstls n ld fx dth brd.

Lng strm-tst slps frlrn, wrk n t prt.

Rks d nt rst n spns, nr wd-ccks snrt,

N dg n snw-drp r n cltsft rlls,

Nr cmmn frg cncct lng prtcls.

}}

The above is also a conventional lipogram in omitting the letters A, E, I, and U.

American author James Thurber wrote The W[o]nderful [O] (1957), a fairy tale in which villains ban the letter 'O' from the use by the inhabitants of the island of [Oo]r[oo].

The book Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (2001) is described as a "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable": the plot of the story deals with a small country that begins to outlaw the use of various letters as the tiles of each letter fall off of a statue. 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 pangram sentences, all twenty-six letters are obviously in use. Also, late in the text, the author begins using letters serving as homophones for the omitted letters (i.e., PH in place of an F, G in place of C), which may be considered cheating. At the beginning of each chapter, the alphabet appears along with a sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". As the letters are removed from the story, the alphabet, and sentence changes.

:Chapter 1: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".

:Chapter 2: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY* "The quick brown fox jumps over the la*y dog".

:Chapter 3: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP*RSTUVWXY* "The *uick brown fox jumps over the la*y dog".

:Chapter 4: ABCDEFGHI*KLMNOP*RSTUVWXY* "The *uick brown fox *umps over the la*y dog".

:Chapter 5: ABCDEFGHI*KLMNOP*RSTUVW*Y* "The *uick brown fo* *umps over the la*y dog".Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea, MP Publishing, 2010

In Rebeccah Giltrow's Twenty-Six Degrees, each of the twenty-six chapters, narrated by a different character, deliberately excludes one of the twenty-six letters while using the other twenty-five at least once. And each of the twenty-six letters is excluded from one and only one chapter (the first chapter excludes A, the second chapter excludes B, the third chapter excludes C, etc., the last (twenty-sixth) chapter excludes Z).{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}

Cipher and Poverty (The Book of Nothing), a book by Mike Schertzer (1998), is presented as the writings of "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 vowels A, E, I, and O, and consonants C, D, F, H, L, M, N, R, S, T, and W, taken from that utterance.

Eunoia, a book written by Canadian author Christian Bök (2001), is lipogrammatic. The title uses every vowel once. Each of the five chapters in this book is a lipogram. The first chapter in this book uses only words containing the vowel "A" and no other vowel. The second chapter uses only words with no vowel but "E", and so on.Christian Bök, Eunoia, Coach House Books, 2005 {{ISBN?}} {{page needed|date=October 2020}}

In December 2009, a collective of crime writers, Criminal Brief, published eight days of articles as a Christmas-themed lipogrammatic exercise.{{cite web| title=Christmas Contest |url=http://www.criminalbrief.com/?p=10052| work=Lipograms |publisher=Criminal Brief| access-date=27 February 2013| author=Lundin, Leigh|author2=Warren, James Lincoln |author3=Lopresti, Rob |author4=Elliott-Upton, Deborah |author5=Steinbock, Steve |author6= Floyd, John | location=Los Angeles|date=December 2009}}

In June 2013, finance author Alan Corey published "The Subversive Job Search",{{cite web|url=http://www.careerpress.com/?section=home&product_id=356|title=Career Press – The Best in Career, Business, and Reference Guides for More than 20 Years|website=careerpress.com}} a non-fiction lipogram that omitted the letter "Z".{{cite web|url=http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/2013/06/alan-corey-talks-about-4-fun-writerly.html|title=CAROLINELEAVITTVILLE: Alan Corey talks about 4 Fun Writerly Things Found in his fab new Book: The Subversive Job Search|last=Caroline|date=14 June 2013}}

In the ninth episode of the ninth season of How I Met Your Mother, "Platonish", Lily and Robin challenge Barney to obtain a girl's phone number without using the letter E.

A website called the Found Poetry Review asked each of its readers (as part of a larger series of challenges) to compose a poem avoiding all letters in the title of the newspaper that had already been selected. For example, if the reader was using the New York Times, then they could not use the letters E, I, K, M, N, O, R, S, T, W, and Y.{{Cite web|url=http://foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-2-lipogram|title=Oulipost #2: Lipogram (Newspaper Titles) | The Found Poetry Review|website=foundpoetryreview.com}}

Grant Maierhofer's Ebb, a novel published in 2023, by Kernpunkt Press, was written entirely without the letter "A".

In Turkey the tradition of "Lebdeğmez atışma" or "Dudak değmez aşık atışması" (literally: two troubadours throwing verses at each other where lips do not touch each other) that is still practiced,{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lebde%25C4%259Fmez|access-date=16 January 2023|title=search query for lebdeğmez|via=YouTube}} a form of instantaneously improvised poetry sung by opposing Ashiks taking turns for artfully criticising each other with one verse at a time, usually by each placing a pin between their upper and lower lips so that the improvised song, accompanied by a Saz (played by the ashik himself), consists only of labial lipograms i.e. without words where lips must touch each other, effectively excluding the letters B, F, M, P and V from the text of the improvised songs.

The seventh- or eighth-century Dashakumaracharita by Daṇḍin includes a prominent lipogrammatic section at the beginning of the seventh chapter. Mantragupta is called upon to relate his adventures. However, during the previous night of vigorous lovemaking, his lips have been nibbled several times by his beloved; as a result, they are now swollen, making it painful for him to close them. Thus, throughout his narrative, he is compelled to refrain from using any labial consonants (प,फ,ब,भ,म).

In France, J. R. Ronden premièred la Pièce sans A (The Play without A) in 1816.[la Pièce sans A de J. R. Ronden] Jacques Arago wrote in 1853 a version of his Voyage autour du monde (Voyage around the world), but without the letter a.{{Cite web|last=Cardenas|first=Fabricio|date=17 March 2015|title=Vieux papiers des Pyrénées-Orientales: Le voyage sans A de Jacques Arago|url=http://vieuxpapierspo.blogspot.com/2015/03/le-voyage-sans-de-jacques-arago.html|access-date=16 January 2023|website=Vieux papiers des Pyrénées-Orientales}} Georges Perec published in 1969 La Disparition, a novel without the letter e, the most commonly used letter of the alphabet in French. Its published translation into English, A Void, by Gilbert Adair, won the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 1995.{{cite web |url=http://www.societyofauthors.org/scott-moncrieff-past-winners |title=List of prize winners at the Society of Authors website |access-date=4 August 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131105134816/http://www.societyofauthors.org/scott-moncrieff-past-winners |archive-date=5 November 2013 |url-status=dead }}

In Sweden, a form of lipogram was developed out of necessity at the Linköping University. Because files were shared and moved between computer 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. {{citation needed|date=December 2018}}

Zanzō ni Kuchibeni o (1989) by Yasutaka Tsutsui is a lipogrammatic novel in Japanese. The first chapter is written without the syllable あ, and usable syllables decrease as the story advances. In the last chapter, the last syllable, ん, vanishes and the story is closed.

Zero Degree (1991) by Charu Nivedita is a lipogrammatic novel in Tamil. The entire novel is written without the common word {{lang|ta|ஒரு}} (oru, "one", also used as the indefinite article), and there are no punctuation marks in the novel except dots. Later the novel was translated into English.{{clarify|date=March 2015|reason=as a lipogram?}}

Russian 18th-century poet Gavriil Derzhavin avoided the harsh R sound (and the letter {{lang|ru|Р}} that represents it) in his poem "The Nightingale" to render the bird's singing.

The seventh-century Arab theologian Wasil ibn Ata gave a sermon without the letter rāʾ (R).{{Cite web|url=http://www.alkeltawia.com/vb/showthread.php?1367-%25CE%25D8%25C8%25C9-%25E6%25C7%25D5%25E1-%25C8%25E4-%25DA%25D8%25C7%25C1-%25C7%25E1%25CA%25ED-%25CC%25C7%25E4%25C8-%25DD%25ED%25E5%25C7-%25C7%25E1%25D1%25C7%25C1|title=خطبة واصل بن عطاء التي جانب فيها الراء|website=alkeltawia.com|language=ar|access-date=12 December 2017}} However, it was the 19th-century Mufti of Damascus, Mahmud Hamza "al-Hamzawi" (d. 1887), who produced perhaps the most remarkable work of this genre with a complete commentary of the Quran (published in two volumes) without dotted letters in either the introduction or interlinear commentary.{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/FP123021/mode/1up|title=در الأسرار في تفسير القرآن بالحروف المهملة |language=ar|access-date=1 February 2020}} This is all the more remarkable because dotted letters make up about half of the Arabic alphabet.

In Hungarian language, the game "eszperente" is a game where people only speak using words that contain the vowel "e"; as this makes otherwise straightforward communication complicated, a lot of creative thinking is required in describing common terms in roundabout ways.

While a lipogram is usually limited to literary works, there are also chromatic lipograms, works of music that avoid the use of certain notes. Examples avoiding either the second, sixth, and tenth notes, or the third, seventh, and eleventh notes in a chromatic scale have been cited.{{citation|last= Slonimsky |first= Nicolas |title= Alexander Tcherepnin Septuagenarian |journal= Tempo |date= Winter 1968–1969 |issue= 87 |pages= 16–23 |doi= 10.1017/S004029820002605X |s2cid= 143018697 }}

A reverse lipogram, also known as an antilipo{{Cite web|url=https://phrontistery.info/liplinks.html|title=Lipogram Links|website=phrontistery.info}} or transgram{{cite web| title=Table of Forms – The Transgram |url=http://spinelessbooks.com/table/forms/transgram.html| access-date=25 November 2019| author=Fitzpatrick-O'Dinn, Dominique}} is a type of constrained writing where each word must contain a particular letter in the text. In Spanish, Mexican author [https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_de_la_Borbolla Óscar de la Borbolla], published in 1991 [https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/298 Las vocales malditas] (the cursed vowels), a compilation of five short stories composed using a single different vowel: "Cantata a Satanás" (Cantata to Satan), "El hereje rebelde" (the rebel heretic), "Mimí sin bikini" (Mimi without a bikini), "Los locos somos otro cosmos" (we the fools are another cosmos), and "Un gurú vudú" (a voodoo guru).

• Pangram (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog)
• Palindrome#Longest palindromes
• Letter frequency

{{Reflist}}

{{Wiktionary|lipogram}}

• [http://phrontistery.info/lipogram.html A Loquacious Location of Lipograms] (omits the letter E)
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-WtH4ujps Andrew Huang performs his own "Rapping without the letter E"]
• [http://forum.index.hu/Article/showArticle?t=9127463&la=77769490 A thread of a Hungarian forum where the members talk only in Eszperente] (regular Hungarian, but using only the vowel E)
• [https://www.scribd.com/doc/44803992/Las-vocales-malditas Las vocales malditas] by Óscar de la Borbolla
• [http://www.wordsmith.org/words/lipogram.html Lipogram article at A.Word.A.Day]
• [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/autolipography.html Lipogrammatic Autobiography by Douglas R. Hofstadter]
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28350 Lives of the Presidents Told in Words of One Syllable] by Jean S. Remy
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6936 Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable] by Mary Godolphin
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7088 The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable] by Mary Godolphin (pseudonym of Lucy Aikin)

{{Authority control}}

Category:Constrained writing