Columnist Marilyn vos Savant offered her readers a challenge: create a sentence of 26 words, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet. About 2000 responded. Will you accept her challenge?
Thecity1.com will publish any qualifying sentence from our viewers, on Thursday, December 1, 2022. Email your linguistic effort to stephanie@thecity1.com by end-of-day, Wednesday, November 30.
Sentences must be intelligible, even if they are imaginary. Tip: make good use of commas, semicolons, hyphens, parentheses, brackets, and colons–to spread out or group your phrases and clauses.
The five best sentences are listed.
1. After kindly chauffeuring my generally very jovial father to our nice, quiet regional hospital, X-rays were scheduled, possibly because drinking eight zombies likely upsets your intestines. (Ken Kaplan)
2. Presumably, very early last year, in great haste, a clandestine rag-tag xylophone septet quietly discussed joining forces with known members of the new undercover zither band. (Leslie O’Kelly)
3. Our library is supposed to be a very quiet zone for everyone, however, unfortunately, your nutty kids just played xylophones with cacophonous results, disturbing me greatly. (Suzanne Bright)
4. Kindly quit screaming; my very excited zebra did not land correctly after jumping over the rugged hedges, but understand, I will gladly pay for your x-ray. (Ann Jeffries)
5. Porcupine quills have nasty barbs, and dogs encountering these rodents may face x-rays, veterinary intervention, or jagged, gory wounds, so keep your zany canine under leash. (Cathy Reed)
