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Letter frequency in English words

Counted across all 172,670 words in our list, the most frequent letter is E (11.51% of all letters), followed by S, I and A. The rarest are Q and J (each about 0.16%). Note this counts letters in a word list, not in running text, where T and H rank higher because of words like THE.

Key facts
Most frequent letterE – in 70% of words
Least frequent lettersQ, J, X
Most frequent in common wordsE, S, I, A, R

Search words by letters

Updated by Daniel Gavalec. Numbers calculated from our word list.

All words

“Share” is the letter’s share of all letters in the list; “In words” is how many words contain it at least once.

Rank Letter Share of letters (%) Words containing it % of words
1 E 11.51 120,888 70
2 S 9.51 103,822 60.1
3 I 9.01 101,959 59
4 A 7.57 93,812 54.3
5 R 7.07 90,658 52.5
6 N 6.85 84,156 48.7
7 T 6.68 83,294 48.2
8 O 6.59 79,303 45.9
9 L 5.31 68,529 39.7
10 C 4.09 55,118 31.9
11 D 3.38 47,021 27.2
12 U 3.27 46,516 26.9
13 P 2.94 40,566 23.5
14 M 2.84 39,662 23
15 G 2.7 38,083 22.1
16 H 2.32 33,445 19.4
17 B 1.84 26,542 15.4
18 Y 1.63 24,460 14.2
19 F 1.23 17,239 10
20 V 0.98 14,814 8.6
21 K 0.85 12,615 7.3
22 W 0.74 11,204 6.5
23 Z 0.47 7,026 4.1
24 X 0.29 4,594 2.7
25 J 0.16 2,456 1.4
26 Q 0.16 2,525 1.5

Common words only

The same count over the 61,942 common words (SCOWL size 50 or less):

Rank Letter Share of letters (%) Words containing it % of words
1 E 11.65 42,465 68.6
2 S 9.02 34,767 56.1
3 I 8.84 34,301 55.4
4 A 7.32 31,128 50.3
5 R 7.17 31,019 50.1
6 N 7.07 29,241 47.2
7 T 6.89 28,753 46.4
8 O 5.93 24,724 39.9
9 L 5.18 22,456 36.3
10 C 4.02 18,100 29.2
11 D 3.99 18,096 29.2
12 U 3.35 15,982 25.8
13 G 3.16 14,609 23.6
14 P 2.92 13,289 21.5
15 M 2.67 12,372 20
16 H 2.19 10,532 17
17 B 1.87 8,841 14.3
18 Y 1.49 7,536 12.2
19 F 1.41 6,490 10.5
20 V 1.03 5,182 8.4
21 K 0.9 4,450 7.2
22 W 0.9 4,466 7.2
23 Z 0.39 1,825 2.9
24 X 0.27 1,386 2.2
25 Q 0.19 990 1.6
26 J 0.18 917 1.5

Word lists vs. running text

Frequency tables for running text (books, news) count every occurrence, so short frequent words – THE, AND, OF – push T, H and O up. A word list counts each word once, so the numbers here are the right ones for word games, where you choose among words rather than read them.

Questions people ask

What is the most common letter in English?

E, both in our word list and in ordinary text. In our list E makes up about 11.5% of all letters and appears in 70% of words.

Why is S so high?

Word lists include plurals and verb forms, so many words end in S. In running text S ranks lower.

Which letters are best for five-letter word games?

For common five-letter words see our strategy guide; the letter ranking there differs slightly because A and R are more frequent in short words.

Sources

  1. ENABLE word list (public domain)
  2. SCOWL 2020.12.07 size levels (Kevin Atkinson)
  3. Peter Norvig: English letter frequency counts (running text, Google Books)

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