It is very rare that you will have to write these names, so the spellings of the letters’ names themselves may not be especially important to learn – what is important is how they are pronounced. The names of these letters mostly correspond to the sound of the letter itself (usually in a single long vowel form, or with a consonant followed by a long vowel), with some exceptions. However, even with these factors under consideration, x, q, z, and j seem to occur less than the other letters of the alphabet.When you need to spell a word out loud, there is a recognised vocabulary for naming the individual letters of the English alphabet. The answer depends on what text you consider, the author, and the subject matter. Of the twenty-six letters, which is the least common? Here’s a quote from the novel: “ And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it.” These phonetic spellings help give the reader an idea of how the character sounds. For example, in Outlander, Diana Gabaldon portrays the Scottish brogue by spelling cannot as canna and didn’t as dinna. They might want to portray a certain dialect, for instance, so they might intentionally change the spelling of some words. Other writers might purposely select an archaic, alternative, or even erroneous spelling for words in a novel. On the other hand, Americans tend to favor spelling words like analyze and realize with a z, whereas a British writer might lean toward spelling these same words with an s. They also add u to other words where American writers do not. For example, British writers spell color with a u : colour. American and British writers spell certain words differently. occur hundreds of times in that article.Īnother factor to consider is the nationality or writing style of the author. As you might guess, the letters that compose the abbreviation et al. Mean ?” contains only one z -in the word italicize. Why? Because the subject is rare letters of the alphabet! Another article published on the Grammarly Blog, “ What Does Et Al. In this article, the letter z occurs sixteen times. What about this article? It is actually a good illustration of how subject matter and author affect letter frequency. And if you value the opinion of cryptologists (people who study secret codes and communication), x, q, and z make the fewest appearances in the writing scene. In dictionaries, j, q, and z are found the least, but some of the words are rarely used. If you want to know which letters are used least in everyday English, you might agree with Samuel Morse’s j, x, and z. It depends on how you are defining rarity. Zim’s Codes and Secret Writing and Robert Lewand’s Cryptological Mathematics, claim that x, q, and z are the letters you are least likely to encounter.Īs you can tell, not everyone agrees on which letters are the rarest. Which letters appear least if you consider a wider range of English vocabulary?Īccording to the English for Students website, j, q, and z occur the least if you analyze the frequency of each letter in the entries of the 11th Concise Oxford Dictionary.
Spelling alphabet letters in english code#
However, people using Morse code mainly use the shortest and most common English words. In modern Morse code, j y, and q are least frequent. He found the smallest numbers of j, x, and z. While developing his famous code, Samuel Morse counted how many of each letter were contained in sets of printer’s type. Write with Grammarly The least frequent letters
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