Letter Frequencies
The average distribution of letters, or the relative frequency of each letter's occurrence in text in a given language can be obtained analyzing large amounts of representative text. This information can be useful in cryptography and for other purposes as well. Letter frequencies vary in different types of writing. In English, the most frequently appearing ten letters are e, t, a, o, i, n, s, h, r, and d, in that order, with the letter e appearing about 13% of the time.
Read more about this topic: Letter (alphabet)
Famous quotes containing the word letter:
“Of all the barbarous middle ages, that
Which is most barbarous is the middle age
Of man! it is—I really scarce know what;
But when we hover between fool and sage,
And don’t know justly what we would be at—
A period something like a printed page,
Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair
Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)