Make a Better InDesign Pangram
Here’s a fun little pastime for a lazy weekend: Come up with a pangram — a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet — that incorporates the word InDesign.
Faithful listeners of our podcast know that InDesign and InCopy already have a pangram in Preferences > Story Editor Display : “Sphinx of black quartz judge my vow” is the one in localized English versions. We even sell t-shirts with that saying, though tragically, no one’s ever bought one, other than me.
The best pangram will a) Make sense, that is, use words found in the dictionary and be grammatically correct; and b) Contain the fewest duplicate letters. So, in English, a 26-letter pangram would be ideal. But, since we’re incorporating the word InDesign, the goal would be a 28-letter sentence, since the InDesign proviso means we’re already hobbled with two n’s and two i’s.
My best attempt after a grueling seven minutes or so, coming in at 39 letters, was this:
Ask InDesign jumble champ: QWERTY or a vixen fez?
It’s ten more letters than the black quartz one. And yes, I agree the use of QWERTY comes a little too close to cheating, but since most English speakers (at least those who use keyboards) know what it means, I’ll bend the rules. 
Do you want to try it? Be sure to use this handy Pangrammer Helper 2.0 I found on type designer Mark Simonson’s blog, it makes the task a lot more fun:
You can type right into the text edit field in Mark’s web page (requires the Flash 8.x or later plugin), or you can download the program for Mac or PC. Looking forward to what you come up with!
In my view, from A to Z, Adobe InDesign is just cooler than QuarkXPress.
Best I could come up with (without sacrificing the rest of the day and all the good will my family might have left) were the following. Tried not to repeat anything but vowels and the 2 repeats in InDesign. Our language definitely needs more vowels (I move that we adopt ø, å, and æ from Norwegian). (Don’t know if those will show up in browsers other than mine.)
Thought this was OK:
Lofty InDesign web jazz vexes Quark chump. (35)
(Make it champ if you prefer. Or chimp.)
Then bettered it thus:
Fly InDesign web jazz to vex Quark chump. (33)
And pared it slightly with this one, though I think initials are cheating:
Fly InDesign whiz to box JV Quark chump. (32)
I can’t stop thinking about this! It’s going to consume my weekend if someone doesn’t hurry up and get something under 30 that still makes sense.
Olaf
Olaf, I am in awe of your pangram skilz.
Doh! I should have realized “Quark” was the perfect word to take up the Q and K.
Professor Eliason, we are honored by your presence here! Everyone: Craig Eliason is the author behind The Daily Pangram: http://dailypangram.tumblr.com/ … note each one is in a different typeface from The FontShop, and links to that face. And of course he uses the Pangrammer Helper 2.0.
Craig, you’re on #598 as I write this, so it’s almost two years you’ve been doing this, I guess. Amazing. Wonder if you knew of the InDesign pangram?
Thanks, but no skillz involved. Just the right level of tired combined with brain damage from working out in the killer Chicagoland sun too long today. Now I’m trying to write one that says, in 26 letters, “Hey, Adobe, check out this pangram and send me a free copy of CS5 everything!”
It’ll work, right?
Olaf
How’s this:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs to get to the copy of InDesign CS5
“The quick buff InDesign user jumped over a lazy XPress worker” and got the job
LOL
“indesign tv wiz jumps blotchy quark fax”
35 — I think I can do a bit better.
“myopic quark flow viz. sixth indesign job”
34 … hang on, I’m getting there.
“faq: ID promulgates chunky job viz. wax.”
31 letters, but I cheated and did not use “Indesign” in full
Zoe quickly became an InDesign expert for her job interview
Expert viewed the quick InDesign job, fully amazed.
Have quite crazy InDesign example of Jabberwocky.
O yes, they’re getting very strange now
They start to sound like Onion headlines
“InDesign jive bewitches floozy Quark mixup!”
“InDesign thrives, fuzzy complex Quark junk bows”
“InDesign equipe analyzes objective framework hoax”
I’m blushing, Anne-Marie.
Some of these are very good!
If allowed abbreviations for InDesign and QuarkXPress, I can get this down to 34:
Keep vouching for ID jazz; QX mostly blows.
Strong ID fumbled viz. whacky QXP job.
– 30.
WOW. These are phenomenal.
I am partial, though to the one that mentioned Zoe, my dog and the InDesignSecrets podcast mascot.
In which case, there’s a strong possibility that she is also an expert
On topic of the idsecrets videocasts:
“ID tv show lacks QXP bug jam frenzy”
– 28
InDesign flock vexed by Jongware’s 6th pangram quiz entry