Amazon Quiz (May 7, 2022): Which letter from the given image appears in approximately 11% of all english words?
A
I
S
E
Answer: E
The letter E is the most common letter in the English language.
In an analysis of 240,000 words in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (11th edition revised, 2004), Oxford English Dictionary (OED) editors found that E was present in 11.1607% of the words in the sample, making it the most commonly occurring letter in the language.
The second most commonly occurring letter in English, is, as many may guess, A, which appeared in 8.4966% of the sample. A was followed by R, which was found in 7.5809% of the words in the sample, wrapping up the top three.
In terms of the top ten common letters in English, E, A, and R are followed by I (7.5448%), O (7.1635%), T (6.9509%), N (6.6544%), S (5.7351%), L (5.4893%), and C (4.5388%), respectively.
However, despite E being the most common letter, there are lengthy works of literature that have been written without a single E.
American author Ernest Vincent Wright’s novel, ‘Gadsby’ (1939), for instance, has over 50,000 words, none of the them containing a single E.
Another 300-page novel, ‘La Disparition’ (1969), written by French author Georges Perec, was also written without using the letter E. The novel has also been translated into over a dozen languages, each edition omitting the most common letter in that language.
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