2025/05/26 by Rohan Balasubramanian, Nitish Gokulakrishnan, Balasubramanian, Rohan +5
Arts and Humanities · #American and British Literature Analysis #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Fidelity #Flexibility (engineering) #Generative grammar #Hierarchy #Power (physics) #Synonym (taxonomy) #Translation Studies and Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.20501
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)
openalex publication_date 2025/05/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Lipograms are a unique form of constrained writing where all occurrences of a particular letter are excluded from the text, typified by the novel Gadsby, which daringly avoids all usage of the letter 'e'. In this study, we explore the power of modern large language models (LLMs) by transforming the novel F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby into a fully 'e'-less text. We experimented with a range of techniques, from baseline methods like synonym replacement to sophisticated generative models enhanced with beam search and named entity analysis. We show that excluding up to 3.6% of the most common letters (up to the letter 'u') had minimal impact on the text's meaning, although translation fidelity rapidly and predictably decays with stronger lipogram constraints. Our work highlights the surprising flexibility of English under strict constraints, revealing just how adaptable and creative language can be.