If we start with the complete alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and choose 19 of the letters to remove, for instance like this: A---E--H-JK------R------Y-, that will leave the alphabetically ordered 7-letter "word" AEHJKRY. So from the 26 letters we want to choose 19 to remove. Answer: C(26,19) = 657800 Edwin