Which are the five most frequently used letters in the English alphabet?

Question

Which are the five most frequently used letters in the English alphabet?

Question #4518. Asked by Maria.
Last updated Jun 01 2021.

McGruff
Answer has 12 votes

Currently Best Answer

McGruff
25 year member
3694 replies avatar

Answer has 12 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.

The most frequently used letters in the English alphabet are E, T, A, O and I.

According to Lewand, arranged from most to least common in appearance, the letters are: etaoinshrdlcumwfgypbvkjxqz

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency

Response last updated by gtho4 on Jun 01 2021.
Jul 22 2000, 4:12 PM

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Answer 1

Of Interest: The inventor of Morse code, Samuel Morse (1791-1872), needed to know this so that he could give the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. He did it simply by counting the number of letters in sets of printers' type. The figures he came up with were:

12,000 E -- 9,000 T -- 8,000 A, I, N, O, S

askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/frequency?view=uk webpage no longer exists

In the Standard Qwerty keyboard layout, the most frequently used letters in English are: ETASORNI.

xpertkeyboard.com/history.htm webpage no longer exists