The Most Common Letters in English: Dictionary vs Everyday Use
E is the most common letter in English, whether you count a dictionary or real text. After that the order changes. In our 168,352-word dictionary the top letters are E, S, I, A, R, N, T, O. In everyday text, weighted by how often each word is actually used, they are E, T, O, A, I, N, S, R, H.
Key facts
- E makes up 11.5% of all letters in the dictionary and 12.4% of letters in running text.
- S is 2nd in the dictionary (9.5%) but only 7th in real text (6.4%), because of plurals and verb endings.
- T, O and H rise in real text thanks to very common words like THE, TO, OF and THAT.
- J, Q, X and Z are the rarest letters by both measures.
Two ways to count letters
Dictionary frequency counts each word once. A rare word like ZYZZYVA counts as much as THE. This is the right measure for word games, because the tiles you draw have to make dictionary words.
Usage frequency counts letters as they appear in real writing and speech, so THE, AND, OF and TO dominate. This is the measure used for code breaking, keyboard design and the famous ETAOIN SHRDLU order.
We calculated both. For usage frequency, we weighted each word by its frequency in the wordfreq dataset, which combines books, news, Wikipedia, subtitles and web text.
The top 12 letters
| Rank | Dictionary | Everyday use |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | E (11.5%) | E (12.4%) |
| 2 | S (9.5%) | T (9.5%) |
| 3 | I (8.9%) | O (8.1%) |
| 4 | A (7.6%) | A (7.6%) |
| 5 | R (7.1%) | I (7.1%) |
| 6 | N (6.8%) | N (7.0%) |
| 7 | T (6.6%) | S (6.4%) |
| 8 | O (6.5%) | R (6.0%) |
| 9 | L (5.3%) | H (5.2%) |
| 10 | C (4.1%) | L (4.1%) |
| 11 | D (3.5%) | D (3.7%) |
| 12 | U (3.3%) | U (2.9%) |
Our everyday-use order matches the classic analysis by Peter Norvig of Google Books data very closely, which found E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H, L, D, C, U.
Why the lists differ
- S and I are boosted in a dictionary by endings like -S, -ES, -ING, -ISM and -IST, which create thousands of extra word forms.
- T, O and H are boosted in real text by a handful of extremely common words: THE, TO, OF, THAT, THIS and WITH.
- W is more than twice as frequent in real text as in the dictionary (WAS, WITH, WE, WHAT, WILL).
What it means for word games
Tile sets give more copies of common letters and more points to rare ones, which roughly matches the dictionary frequency, not the everyday one. We compare points and frequency for every letter in why letters are worth what they are. You can see every letter’s value on our letter points page.
Sources
- Our own analysis of the ENABLE word list, weighted by wordfreq frequencies.
- Peter Norvig, English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited.
