Constrained writing

Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form.

The most common constrained forms of writing are strict restrictions in vocabulary, e.g. Basic English, E-Prime, defining vocabulary for dictionaries, and other limited vocabularies for teaching English as a Second Language or to children. This is not generally what is meant by 'constrained writing' in the literary sense, which is motivated by more aesthetic concerns. For example:

• Lipogram, a letter (commonly e or o) is outlawed;
• Palindromes, such as the word "radar," read the same both ways;
• Alliterativess, in which every word must start with the same letter (or subset of letters; see Alphabetical Africa)
• Acrostics;
• Reverse-lipograms (each word must contain a particular letter);
• Ander-Saxon;
• Anagrams;
• Aleatory (where the reader supplies a random input);

Gadsby is an English-language novel consisting of 50,100 words, none of which contain the letter "e".

In 1969, France's Georges Perec published La Disparition, a novel that did not include the letter "e". It was translated into English in 1995 by Gilbert Adair as "A Void".

In 2004, a new marvel from France: a novel, entirely without verbs: Le Train de Nulle Part ("The Train from Nowhere") by Michel Thaler. [1]

One famous constrained writing in the Chinese language is the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den which consists of 92 characters, all with the sound shi.

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