What does the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog mean?
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog has no hidden meaning. It is famous because it is a pangram, a sentence containing every letter of the English alphabet.
The sentence describes a simple scene, but its real purpose is practical. Because it includes all 26 letters, it has long been used to test typewriters, keyboards and printers, to show off typefaces and to help people practice typing and handwriting.
An early version, A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, appeared in American newspapers in the 1880s as a handwriting practice sentence. Later versions changed a to the. The phrase was also used to test telegraph and teleprinter lines and is still used by graphic designers today.
Fun facts
The sentence has 35 letters, so some letters repeat, including o, which appears four times. Microsoft Word once had a hidden feature that typed the sentence. It has also been used in computer programs and fonts around the world.
Did You Know?
Graphic designers also use placeholder text called lorem ipsum, which comes from a scrambled passage by the Roman writer Cicero.