{{Short description|Text containing all letters of the alphabet in order}} A '''panalphabetic window''' is a stretch of text that contains all the letters of the alphabet [[alphabetical order|in order]]. It is a special type of [[pangram]] or [[pangrammatic window]].
Natural-sounding panalphabetic sentences are not particularly difficult to construct. Poet [[Howard Bergerson]] constructed the following 132-letter panalphabetic window:<ref name="shakespeare" /><ref name="eckler" /><ref name="dance" /> {{quote|Well, '''ab'''out porn, I '''c'''an say '''def'''initely that althou'''gh''' '''I''' loathe '''j'''un'''k''' '''l'''ike that '''m'''yself, I do'''n''''t pr'''op'''ose to '''q'''uestion othe'''r''' people''''s''' righ'''t''' to it, beca'''u'''se, in my '''v'''ie'''w''', if se'''xy''' maga'''z'''ines and X-rated movies are what they want instead of the real thing, more power to them!}}
Considerably rarer are short, naturally occurring panalphabetic windows. Based on the [[letter frequency]] distribution of a large corpus, [[Mike Keith (mathematician)|Mike Keith]] calculated the expected window size for English text to be around 3000 letters. His computer-assisted search of [[Project Gutenberg]] identified the shortest natural panalphabetic window as a 535-letter passage from ''The Alkahest'', a translation of [[Honoré de Balzac]]'s ''[[The Quest of the Absolute|La Recherche de l'Absolu]]'':<ref name="keith" /> {{quote|Soon, little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind Emm'''a'''nuel's '''b'''ack, trifling de'''c'''eptions which give to a look or a wor'''d''' a m'''e'''aning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause o'''f''' innocent mistakes. Relyin'''g''' on '''hi'''s intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the secret of Marguerite's '''j'''ourney, and to '''k'''now if it were rea'''l'''ly a question of her '''m'''arriage, a'''n'''d, whether he must ren'''o'''unce all ho'''p'''e; but, notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in '''q'''uestioning them, neithe'''r''' Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good rea'''s'''on '''t'''hat they were in the dark themselves; Marg'''u'''erite in taking the reins of power seemed to ha'''v'''e follo'''w'''ed its ma'''x'''ims and kept silence as to her projects.
The gloom'''y''' sadness of Baltha'''z'''ar and his great depression made it difficult to get through the evenings.}}
A shorter 408-letter panalphabetic window was identified by Branden Aldridge in 2018, from [[Thomas Hart Benton (politician)|Thomas Hart Benton]]'s 1854 autobiography ''Thirty Years View'':<ref name="aldridge" />
{{quote|[...] the politicians were to make the panic, by the alarms which they created for the safety of the laws, of the constitution, the public liberty, '''a'''nd the pu'''b'''li'''c''' money: an'''d''' most z'''e'''alously did each division o'''f''' the combination perform its part, and for the lon'''g''' period of t'''h'''ree full months. The dec'''i'''sion of the resolution condemning General '''J'''ac'''k'''son, on which a'''l'''l this '''m'''achi'''n'''ery '''o'''f distress and '''p'''anic was hung, re'''q'''ui'''r'''ed no part of that time. There wa'''s''' '''t'''he same majority to vote it the first day as the last; b'''u'''t the time was wanted to get up the alarm and the distress; and the '''v'''ote, '''w'''hen taken, was not from any e'''x'''haustion of the means of terrif'''y'''ing and agoni'''z'''ing the country, but for the purpose of having the sentence of condemnation ready for the Virginia elections—ready for spreading over Virginia at the approach of the April elections.}}
==See also== *[[Pangram]] *[[Pangrammatic window]]
==References== <references>
<ref name="shakespeare">{{cite journal |last=Bergerson |first=Howard |date=August 1980 |title=Kickshaws |url=http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol13/iss3/12/ |journal=[[Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics]] |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=175–186 }}</ref> <ref name="dance">{{cite book |last=Eckler |first=Ross |date=1997 |title=Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Wordplay |publisher=St Martins Griffin |page=160 |isbn=978-0312155803 }}</ref> <ref name="eckler">{{cite journal |last=Eckler |first=A. Ross Jr.|date=May 2010 |title=Howard Bergerson |url=http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol43/iss2/2/ |journal=[[Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics]] |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=82–88 }}</ref> <ref name="keith">{{cite journal |last=Keith |first=Mike |date=February 2001 |title=Panalphabetic Windows in Literature |url=http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol34/iss1/23/ |journal=[[Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics]] |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=74–76 }}</ref> <ref name="aldridge">{{cite journal |last=Aldridge |first=Branden |date=April 2018 |title=Colloquy |url=https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol51/iss2/13/ |journal=[[Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics]] |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=34 }}</ref>
</references>
[[Category:Pangrams]] [[Category:Alphabetical order]]