Editing Lipogram (section)

{{Short description|Writing that avoids specific letters}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2023}}
[[File:Plaque perec.JPG|thumb|Plaque in tribute to [[Georges Perec]] by [[Christophe Verdon]]. Café de la Mairie, [[Place Saint-Sulpice]] in Paris.]]
A '''lipogram''' (from {{langx|grc|λειπογράμματος}}, ''leipográmmatos'', "leaving out a letter"<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DL%3Aentry+group%3D9%3Aentry%3Dlipogram-harpers Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Lipogram]</ref> is a kind of [[constrained writing]] or [[word game]] consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided.<ref name="McArthurTom">McArthur, Tom (1992). ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'', p. 612. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|019214183X}}</ref><ref>"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", pp. 97–98 University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}}</ref> Extended Ancient Greek texts avoiding the letter [[sigma]] are the earliest examples of lipograms.<ref name="MotteJrWarrenF">Motte Jr, Warren F (1986). "Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", pp. 100–101 University of Nebraska Press. {{ISBN|978-0803281318}}</ref>

Writing a lipogram may be a trivial task when avoiding uncommon letters like ''[[Z]]'', ''[[J]]'', ''[[Q]]'', or ''[[X]]'', but it is much more challenging to avoid [[Letter frequency|common letters]] like ''[[E]]'', ''[[T]]'', or ''[[A]]'' in the English language, as the author must omit many ordinary words. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose. Identifying lipograms can also be problematic, as there is always the possibility that a given piece of writing in any language may be unintentionally lipogrammatic. For example, [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]]'s poem ''[[The Raven]]'' contains no ''Z'', but there is no evidence that this was intentional.

A '''pangrammatic lipogram''' is a text that uses every letter of the alphabet except one. For example, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" omits the letter ''S'', which [[The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog|the usual pangram]] includes by using the word ''jumps''.