Photo: Ann H

What is the rarest letter?

The rarest letters in English are j, q, x, and z.

grammarly.com - What's the Rarest Letter of the Alphabet? - Grammarly

Who is the lowest paying?

25 of the Lowest Paying Jobs Food-Preparation Workers. ... Gambling Dealers. ... Gambling Change Persons and Booth Cashiers. ... Parking Lot...

Last updated Feb 14, 2022

What are red flags for recruiters?

If you get through the phone screen and one round of interviews, without a single question from them, it's a red flag. Either they don't want the...

Last updated Sep 16, 2022

Promotion

The rarest letters in English are j , q , x , and z . In English, there are twenty-six letters. If you had to guess, which letter do you think gets used the least? Determining the answer is not as straightforward as you might imagine. Let’s look at the alphabet and then reveal the rarest of all letters. Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your Want to make sure your writing shines? Grammarly can check your spelling and save you from grammar and punctuation mistakes. It even proofreads your text, so your work is extra polished wherever you write. Your writing, at its best Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly

The least frequent letters

While developing his famous code, Samuel Morse counted how many of each letter were contained in sets of printer’s type. He found the smallest numbers of j, x, and z. In modern Morse code, j y, and q are least frequent. However, people using Morse code mainly use the shortest and most common English words. Which letters appear least if you consider a wider range of English vocabulary?

According 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. Two sources, Herbert S. 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. As you can tell, not everyone agrees on which letters are the rarest. It depends on how you are defining rarity. If you want to know which letters are used least in everyday English, you might agree with Samuel Morse’s j, x, and z. In dictionaries, j, q, and z are found the least, but some of the words are rarely used. 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.

Factors that influence letter frequency

What will be the next TikTok?

Triller is a popular alternative to TikTok. It seems to be the app that celebrities gravitate toward to record and edit their videos, probably...

Last updated May 23, 2020

What is the next TikTok?

TikTok's competitors include Clash, Triller, Dubsmash, Instagram, Byte, Funimate, Lomotif, Cheez, Vigo Video, KWAI, Likee, Firework, and VideoShow....

Last updated Jul 31, 2021

Promotion

What about this article? It is actually a good illustration of how subject matter and author affect letter frequency. In this article, the letter zoccurs sixteen times. Why? Because the subject is rare letters of the alphabet! Another article published on the Grammarly Blog, “What Does Et Al. Mean?” contains only one z—in the word italicize. As you might guess, the letters that compose the abbreviation et al. occur hundreds of times in that article. Another factor to consider is the nationality or writing style of the author. American and British writers spell certain words differently. For example, British writers spell color with a u: colour. They also add u to other words where American writers do not. 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. Other writers might purposely select an archaic, alternative, or even erroneous spelling for words in a novel. They might want to portray a certain dialect, for instance, so they might intentionally change the spelling of some words. For example, in Outlander, Diana Gabaldon portrays the Scottish brogue by spelling cannot as canna and didn’t as dinna. 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.

Of the twenty-six letters, which is the least common?

The answer depends on what text you consider, the author, and the subject matter. However, even with these factors under consideration, x, q, z, and j seem to occur less than the other letters of the alphabet. If you guessed one of these four, congratulations are in order!

grammarly.com - What's the Rarest Letter of the Alphabet? - Grammarly

What does TikTok pay monthly?

Users had to use the fame to find other sources of earnings like brand deals, promotions, etc. But now, TikTok is paying real money to creators for...

Last updated Feb 19, 2020