Mastodon instance where you can’t post the letter “e”: https://oulipo.social/public/local 🙃
Wasn’t there a novel written in the 1880s that did not include the letter E? The most commonly used letter in the English language. The story in the novel was unremarkable save for the fact that… yeah, there are no Es.
That’s cool as a technical exercise.
And it was. It wasn’t noticed much when it first came out, but some decades later it blew up when people realised how cool it was.
Restaurant Review… no wait
Eatery Evaluation…no…
Food Box, Go or No Go? By Homer… Bill Simpson.
In English, not using “e” seems like the true struggle.
(Sentence above free of "a"s).
There’s an entire novel that did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
Several. Later Georges Perec also did
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void
Which is a book about a world in which the letter “E” has disappeared and only one guy notices it. He tries to prove it, but of course all works of literature have been “rewritten” by reality to no longer include E. For example, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, is now A Blackbird - which the author includes in full, keeping the original meter and plot.
I heard about this when I was in my twenties, forgot the details, and purchased The Great Gatsby instead.
I thought I was missing something for the longest time. I guess I was.
Ahh that’s the one. For some reason I thought it was from the 1880s…
I just did it.
You thought you did somthing thr didnt you? Wll sorry to burst your bubbl but numrous sentnces could b constructd without mploying th first ltter of the Nglish lxicon.
sentnces
They snuck right past you
I left one in there as an exercise for the reader. I also didn’t change the letter position from first to fifth :D
Just reminded me of this.
In what sense is it the first letter of the English lexicon? Lexicon ≠ alphabet
In the sense that Alphabet has an ‘a’ in it.
Yeah, but it isn’t impressive avoiding a letter if you can use any word you want, and it doesnt matter what it means. “Without employing the second most frequent letter of English.” would make sense or “the vowel which is commonly listed first” or some sort of thing. I suspect they just didn’t know what lexicon meant and thought it sounded smart.
“I win the bet”
Thomas Jefferson: Intelligence.
Benjamin Franklin: Genius.
deleted by creator
I’m going to assume you’re serious…
You’re describing the relationship between Nicola Tesla (inventor, genius) and Thomas Edison (business man, scumbag).
Benjamin Franklin (pictured right) is the guy who proved the existence of electricity. He is better known for
inventingusing the printing press and inventing bifocals.Apparently he invented time travel, too, if he was able to go back to 1440 to invent the printing press.
I wouldn’t put it past him.
You’re right, not the inventor. I had thought he reinvented it, making the first modern printing press, rather he built his own and was one of the first prolific users of one in America.
I’ve never seen a picture of Franklin when he was young. Maybe he was almost 400 years old when he died?
/s
On Reddit there was a subreddit where you couldn’t use the letter E, r/AVoid5 iirc
Throwback to rddit mold mayhaps?
Oh I could, with simplicity.
你用英语因为你只懂英语。
我不肯用英语因为我不肯给你懂。
我们不同。
(Prompt didn’t specify which linguistic-type to use. P.S. used pinyin without the first letter of the 字母)
Might’ve been better paired with Adams. If I’m remembering correctly, when they were going to France, Adams tried to learn the language with rote memorization and conjugation tables and whatnot. Franklin apparently just made up “French-sounding” words.
