Try it now. Go on, put this post down for a moment and try to craft a paragraph—just a short, simple story—without using that fifth symbol of our ABCs. It’s a tough task, isn’t it? That small, common grapheme is so tightly woven into our linguistic fabric that trying to avoid it feels like trying to walk without moving your joints. Your vocabulary shrinks. Your syntax twists into odd shapes. Your communication grows clunky, almost frantic.

And yet, for a distinct group of wordsmiths, this isn’t a flaw; it’s a feature. This is the art of the lipogram, a form of constrained writing where an author deliberately omits a particular letter. And while any symbol can go missing, the most famous and forbidding quarry is, by far, our old pal, “e.” It’s a challenge so profound that mastering it doesn’t just show off technical skill—it unlocks a whole new way of thinking about language itself.

What’s in a Name? The Lipogram Explained

The term “lipogram” comes from the Greek leipogrammatos, which translates to “leaving out a letter.” At its core, it’s a literary game, a self-imposed obstacle course. The difficulty of this game in any given language depends entirely on the frequency of the letter being avoided. In English, “e” is a statistical titan. It appears in roughly 11% of all text, making it both the most common vowel and the most common letter overall.

Think of what you lose without it:

• The most common word in English: “the.”
• Pronouns like “he”, “she”, “we”, “they”, “me.”
• Verbs of being: “be”, “were.”
• The ubiquitous past-tense marker “-ed.”
• Countless essential nouns: “letter”, “sentence”, “word”, “people”, “sense”, “experience.”

Writing without “e” isn’t just about finding substitute words; it’s about fundamentally rewiring the grammatical engine of English. It’s an act of linguistic demolition and reconstruction, all at once.

A Short History of Willful Omission

Though it may sound like a modern, experimental quirk, the lipogram has ancient roots. The Greek poet Tryphiodorus, back in the 3rd or 4th century AD, supposedly wrote a 24-book version of the Odyssey where each book omitted a different letter of the Greek alphabet. Book 1 (Alpha) had no alphas, Book 2 (Beta) had no betas, and so on. While much of this work is lost, the legend itself highlights a long-standing fascination with creative constraints.

The practice continued through the centuries, but it found its most fervent and influential champions in the 20th century with a French group known as the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or “Workshop for Potential Literature”). Founded in 1960, the Oulipo group included writers and mathematicians who believed that strict, formal constraints, far from stifling creativity, could actually liberate it. For them, the lipogram wasn’t just a party trick; it was a tool for discovering new literary possibilities.

The Mount Everest of Lipograms: Georges Perec’s A Void

If the Oulipo provided the theory, it was member Georges Perec who provided the stunning proof. In 1969, he published La Disparition, a 300-page novel written entirely without the letter “e.” The achievement is so monumental it’s hard to overstate. It’s not a short story or a poem, but a full, complex novel with a sprawling plot and dozens of characters.

What makes the book a work of genius is how the constraint becomes central to the plot. The story follows a group of individuals investigating the mysterious disappearance of their friend, Anton Vowl. As they dig deeper, they feel a growing, unnerving sense of absence, a “void” in their world and in their own words that they can’t quite identify. The missing letter haunts the narrative, becoming a character in its own right. The constraint is the story.

The feat was so extraordinary that many thought it untranslatable. How could you replicate such a specific linguistic puzzle in another language? But in 1994, translator Gilbert Adair rose to the challenge, producing the English version, A Void. Adair’s work wasn’t a direct translation but a “transcreation.” He had to write his own English lipogram that followed the plot and spirit of Perec’s original. The result is a masterpiece in its own right. Just look at this typical bit of its amazing narration:

A roaring tumult of industry, a clangour of sounds, a non-stop, day-long, night-long pulsating rhythm, a gigantic symphony of groans, of clashing wills, of chains, of mallets, of grinding, of pounding, of hissing, of boiling, of furious sparks. A world of pain and horror. A dark, sad saga of Man against Man; of fallacy and sin.

Before Perec, American author Ernest Vincent Wright published Gadsby in 1939, a novel of over 50,000 words also written without an “e.” While a significant accomplishment, Wright’s book is often seen as more of a technical curiosity, as its prose can be awkward and its plot simplistic. Perec’s triumph was in making the constraint artistically meaningful.

The Paradox: Why Limitation Breeds Invention

So, why would anyone subject themselves to this linguistic torture? The answer lies in a fascinating creative paradox: limitation is a catalyst for invention.

When a writer’s most familiar tools are taken away, they are forced to innovate. They must dig deeper into the dictionary, searching for obscure but fitting words. A “man” might turn into a “guy”, a “lad”, a “bozo”, or a “chap.” A “red house” could transform into a “maroon building” or a “brick cabin.” This forced expansion of vocabulary can lead to surprisingly fresh and vivid descriptions.

Syntax also becomes a playground. Without the ability to form simple past tenses with “-ed”, a writer must find new ways to convey time. They might rely on perfect tenses (“I had shown”) or find verbs that don’t follow the standard pattern (“I saw”, “I brought”). This leads to prose with an unusual rhythm and flow—a voice that is utterly unique to the constraint.

Ultimately, the art of omission is a testament to human ingenuity. It proves that creativity isn’t about having infinite freedom, but about what you can build within a defined space. It’s like a jazz musician improvising over a complex chord progression or a painter creating a world with only three colors. The rules don’t limit the art; they give it its shape, its challenge, and its very reason for being.

So next time you find yourself in a creative rut, try giving something up. Take away your favorite tool. You might find that in that empty space, something new, unexpected, and brilliant begins to grow.