Why Analyze Letter Frequency?
Letter frequency analysis reveals fascinating patterns in text. From cryptography to linguistics, understanding which letters appear most often provides insights that go far beyond simple word counting. Our Letter Counter breaks down your text character by character.
This analysis is invaluable for code-breaking, writing analysis, creating word games, SEO optimization, and understanding language patterns. It forms the basis of frequency analysis used in cryptography for centuries.
English Letter Frequency
In typical English text, letters don't appear equally. Here's the expected frequency distribution:
| Rank | Letter | Frequency | Common Words |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E | 12.7% | the, be, me, he |
| 2 | T | 9.1% | the, to, that, this |
| 3 | A | 8.2% | and, a, about, an |
| 4 | O | 7.5% | of, or, on, one |
| 5 | I | 7.0% | in, is, it, if |
🔐 Cryptography Fact
The mnemonic ETAOIN SHRDLU represents the 12 most common letters in English. Cryptographers use letter frequency to crack substitution ciphers—if a coded letter appears 12% of the time, it's probably E!
Applications of Letter Frequency Analysis
Cryptography & Security
Letter frequency was historically used to break simple substitution ciphers. By matching the most common cipher characters to ETAOIN, analysts could decode messages. Modern encryption doesn't have this vulnerability, but the technique remains educational.
Linguistics & Language Research
Comparing letter frequencies between texts can identify the language, authorship patterns, or even detect AI-generated content. Each language has distinct frequency signatures.
Game Design
Games like Scrabble assign point values inversely to letter frequency. E is worth 1 point (common) while Q is worth 10 points (rare). Understanding frequency helps create word puzzles that are neither too easy nor impossible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are uppercase and lowercase counted separately?
By default, our tool combines uppercase and lowercase (A and a are counted together). This gives you the true letter frequency regardless of capitalization.
What about non-English letters?
We count all Unicode letters, including accented characters (é, ñ, ü). These are counted separately from their base letters, which is important for analyzing non-English text accurately.
How does this differ from character count?
Letter count only includes alphabetic characters (A-Z). Character count includes everything: letters, numbers, spaces, punctuation, and symbols. Use our Character Counter for total character analysis.
Fun Facts About Letters
- Z and Q are the rarest letters in English, appearing less than 0.1% of the time
- E appears in about 11% of all words in a typical English text
- The letter S is the most common starting letter for words
- E is also the most common letter in French, German, and Spanish