The Most Common Letters in English
Some letters do far more work than others. We counted every letter across the roughly 168,000 words in our dictionary to find exactly how common each one is, and the answer is useful for Wordle, Scrabble, hangman and crosswords alike.
The ranking, by how many words contain each letter
This is the share of all words that contain each letter at least once:
| Letter | In this share of words |
|---|---|
| E | 70% |
| S | 60% |
| I | 58% |
| A | 54% |
| R | 52% |
| N | 48% |
| T | 47% |
| O | 45% |
| L | 39% |
| C | 31% |
| D | 27% |
| U | 27% |
| P | 23% |
| M | 23% |
| G | 22% |
| H | 19% |
| B | 15% |
| Y | 14% |
| F | 10% |
| V | 8% |
| K | 7% |
| W | 7% |
| Z | 4% |
| X | 3% |
| Q | 1% |
| J | 1% |
E is the runaway winner, in seven of every ten words. At the other end, J and Q appear in only about one word in a hundred, which is exactly why they are worth 8 and 10 points in Scrabble.
A note on "common"
There are two ways to measure this, and they give slightly different answers. The table above counts how many dictionary words contain each letter. If instead you count letters as they appear in everyday writing, the order shifts a little, because short, heavily-used words like "the" and "and" pull T, H and A up. In running text the usual order is E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R. Either way, E is first and J, Q, X and Z are last.
Where letters like to sit
- Most words start with S, C or P. S alone begins about one word in nine.
- Most words end in S — about 37% of them, thanks to plurals and verb forms — followed by E, D, G and Y.
- Vowels are everywhere: E, A, I and O each appear in roughly half of all words, while U trails the other vowels.
What this means for word games
- Wordle: open with a word full of the top letters. RAISE and STARE pack five of them in. See our best Wordle starting words.
- Hangman: guess E, then A, S, R and the other common letters before trying anything rare. Our hangman strategy has the order.
- Scrabble: the rare letters score the most, so learn the short words that play J, Q, X and Z. See our short words with Z, X, J and Q.
- Crosswords: when you have a few crossing letters, the common ones above are the safest guesses to fill a gap.
Curious what words a set of letters can make? Try our word unscrambler.
Figures come from our own dictionary (the public-domain ENABLE word list), counting each word once. Letter frequencies in everyday writing differ slightly, as noted above.
Related reading: Best Wordle starting words · Hangman strategy
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