The most used letter in English
The letter ‘E’ is most commonly used in the English language. Studies based on large text samples, books, newspapers and spoken conversations show that ‘E’ is about 11-12% of all letters used in English.
What is the reason behind it?
The most used word in English is ‘the’. This contributes significantly to the repetition of the single word ‘E’. Imperative pronouns such as he, she, me, we, and they also depend on a syllable. Words like ‘be’ and ‘were’ would also be lost without it.
Grammar rules
Why it matters in cryptography and puzzles
‘E’ plays a major role in cryptography. Codebreakers often begin decoding cryptic messages by identifying the most commonly used symbols. It is usually considered as ‘E’. This method, called frequency analysis, has been used for centuries to break encrypted text and wartime codes.
A major language challenge
The ‘E’ is so important that completely ignoring it is considered the biggest challenge in English writing. Despite this, in 1939, author Ernest Vincent Wright accomplished this impossible feat by writing an entire novel titled ‘Gadsby’. The novel was around 50,000 words and did not use the letter ‘E’ even once. Apart from ‘E’, ‘T’ is the only letter that appears in about 9% of English text, and ‘A’ appears in about 8%.
December 18, 2025 2:58 PM IST