Books to start 2012 with!

Lipograms - For Letter Artisans only

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Published on Wednesday, 03 November 2010 09:38

A Lipogram is exactly that. From the greek root Lipogrammatos - Lipo meaning missing and grammatos meaning letters - Lipogram

is a piece of writing missing a letter.Commonly, the letter E is discluded

but other vowels are sometimes missed such as A and O are missed or O and E are missed for example.

Furthermore, some authors choose to step it up with the Pangrammatic Lipogram. A Lipogram with every single letter of the

alphabet except one of them. The following is a Pangrammatic Lipogram with the missing letter 's'

'The quick fox jumped over the lazy dog'

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby, a famous Lipogrammatic novel, that had omitted the letter 'E'. Here is a Lipogrammatic Pangram poem by Gyles Bandreth, omitting the letter 'e' but including every other letter in the alphabet.

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

As you can imagine, it is a very difficult task to compose a Lipogram.

My opinion is that Lipogram Authors are the true Artisans of letters.

Do you think you can become one?