An autogram is a self-referential sentence that provides information about itself. It can be simple or complex, and can serve as a pangram. It can also be paradoxical, like “This statement is false.”
In general terms, an autogram is simply a sentence that is self-referential and provides information about itself in the content within it. A simple statement such as “This sentence has only six words” is an example of such an expression. Much more complex autogram forms can include a great deal of additional content describing the sentence, such as the number of specific letters and punctuation marks used. The nature of these sentences also allows them to easily serve as a pangram, which is a sentence that includes at least one use of every letter in a language.
An autogram typically contains grammatical information or phrase identifying information about word usage, although any type of data can be provided within it. Something as simple as “This sentence does not include adverbs,” can be an autogram, although it could also be “This sentence is not a question.” These are fairly simplistic forms, however, as they deal with general, easy information that is quickly identified by both writer and reader.
A much more complicated type of autogram is a sentence that might begin: “This sentence contains only three a’s, three c’s, two d’s, twenty-five e’s”; the sentence goes on to identify the number of letters in it from A to Z. This gets quite tricky, as each spelling of the numbers must be considered as part of the final letter count. Incidentally, the letter “s” also gains quite a number of uses since each letter requires “s” to indicate that it is a plural.
By its very nature, an autogram can also be used to create a pangram or phrase that includes at least one use of each letter. For example, in English, the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps on the lazy dog” contains every letter of the alphabet. An autogram created as a pangram can simply indicate each letter that might otherwise be missing and note a single use. This is a somewhat artificial form of pangram, however, as some letters can simply be forced into the sentence.
While not indicative of grammatical content or word choice, a self-referential and paradoxical sentence can also be created, such as “This statement is false.” Logically, this sentence makes no sense. If it’s false, then it would be true to say it and it can’t be false; if true, then it would be false, which cannot make it true.
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