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Out of context: Reply #18054
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"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a pangram (a phrase that uses all the letters of the alphabet) that has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards because it is nicely coherent and short. It was known in the late 19th century, and Baden-Powell's book Scouting for Boys (1908) used the phrase as a practice sentence for signalling. In later years, the phrase was popularized by Western Union and the Telephone Company to test Telex/TWX data communication equipment for accuracy and reliability. It was often used for testing the teletype services (a procedure known as "foxing") when these machines were still used, as indicated in many reports of shortwave radio listeners to communications magazines or to services such as QTH.net. Many minor variations exist, including replacing one of the "the"s with an "a". Although it is the most popular, many other sentences are shorter and use each letter of the alphabet, such as "The five boxing wizards jump quickly."