The Missing Letter

I'll bet you find it

Apr 27, 2024

Welcome to “Off the Clock,” the fortnightly weekend edition of Timeless & Timely — a fun look at speech and lingo.

This is one for the word nerds out there, furnished fully for our VIPs, who get of this and more. Join them:

We’re lucky to live in a world filled with numerous words for our use or enjoyment.

But out of twenty-six letters, if one is missing, would you notice? For example, could you write without using the letter A?

I wouldn’t recommend it.

Honestly, your sentences will just sound wrong.

Everyone might notice you’re doing something different. Your writing won’t flow smoothly — you’ll use weird words.

It’s not worth the effort involved in spending time online (or offline) looking up oodles of synonyms which don’t feel right, just to produce odd, stilted prose.

Indeed, you might be better off just giving up.

Not me, though.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

There’s so much to know,

P.S.

Did you notice?

6 Comments

Erik Deckers

Apr 27Liked by Scott Monty

Very clever. I noticed it right away. I was going to try it here, but found out I couldn't because I wanted to tell you about the novel Gatsby, in which the author never used the letter E in 50,000 words. This is what's known as a lipogram, which apparently is not a kiss you have delivered to your sweetie. Instead, it's where the author constrains themselves in some way, such as never using a certain letter.

Expand full comment

2 replies by Scott Monty and others

David Soubly

LOL ok, so here's my response:

In what you've written, in the three places where you use the word "just," use "simply" instead. Substitute "pleasure" for "enjoyment." Then you'll have written your piece without the FIRST missing letter.

Now, as for your SECOND missing letter, well. That one's a vowel, and a lot harder to eliminate. ("blessed" for "lucky," "many" for "numerous," "we employ and enjoy" for "for our use or enjoyment," ... oh, forget it!)

I also briefly thought the alphabet displayed was a variant of the Greek one (which shares those missing letters, depending on how you look at it), but I think not: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

I've had too much coffee. I can tell.

1 reply by Scott Monty

4 more comments...