About this lipogram checker
A lipogram is writing that deliberately avoids one or more letters. The most famous examples avoid E, the most common letter in English: Ernest Vincent Wright’s 1939 novel Gadsby runs to about 50,000 words without one, and Georges Perec wrote a whole French novel the same way. Christian Bök’s Eunoia goes further, with chapters that each use only one vowel. Because a single slip is easy to miss, this checker scans your text, highlights every forbidden letter, lists the offending words, and gives compliance scores. The difficulty rating is based on how often the forbidden letters occur in ordinary English, so avoiding E is extreme while avoiding Q is trivial.
How to check a lipogram
- Add your text. Paste your writing or press a preset to see how the checker works.
- Choose the forbidden letters. Type them in any form (e, e,a, or ea) or click them on the letter dial. Decide whether case and accents matter.
- Press Check lipogram. Fix the highlighted letters and the listed words, then check again until it is valid.
Frequently asked questions
Why is writing without E so hard?
E makes up about 12% of the letters in English text and appears in “the”, “he”, “she”, “be”, and most past tenses ending in -ed. Avoiding it rules out a huge share of everyday words.
What is a univocalic?
A text that uses only one vowel, such as only A. Forbid the other four vowels, E, I, O, and U, to check one; the Only A preset shows an example.
How is the difficulty rated?
The checker adds up how often the forbidden letters appear in typical English. Under 1% is trivial, up to 3% easy, up to 7% moderate, up to 12% hard, and above that extreme.
Do numbers and symbols count?
No. Only letters are checked. A digit such as 3 never counts as a letter, even when it is read as “three”.
Should I turn on case-sensitive?
Usually not, because lipograms ban a letter in both cases. Case-sensitive mode is useful for puzzles where only capital or only small letters are forbidden.