[TVARC] Morse code item

[Robert Averitt]

I was doing some research on the most commonly used letters in the English
language and came across this interesting article on the Morse code -
worthy of sharing with fellow hams...
Bob
WA3EWK


Which Letters In The Alphabet Are Used Most Often?

 The inventor of Morse <https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/morse>code,
Samuel Morse (1791-1872), needed to know this so that he could give the
simplest codes to the most frequently used letters.  He did it simply by
counting the number of letters in sets of printers' type.

The figures he came up with were:

12,000

E

2,500

F

9,000

T

2,000

W, Y

8,000

A, I, N, O, S

1,700

G, P

6,400

H

1,600

B

6,200

R

1,200

V

4,400

D

800

K

4,000

L

500

Q

3,400

U

400

J, X

3,000

C, M

200

Z





However, this gives the frequency of letters in English text, which is
dominated by a relatively small number of common words.  For word games, it
is often the frequency of letters in English vocabulary, regardless of word
frequency, which is of more interest. We did an analysis of the letters
occurring in the words listed in the main entries of the *Concise Oxford
Dictionary* (11th edition revised, 2004) and came up with the following
table:



E

11.1607%

56.88

M

3.0129%

15.36

A

8.4966%

43.31

H

3.0034%

15.31

R

7.5809%

38.64

G

2.4705%

12.59

I

7.5448%

38.45

B

2.0720%

10.56

O

7.1635%

36.51

F

1.8121%

9.24

T

6.9509%

35.43

Y

1.7779%

9.06

N

6.6544%

33.92

W

1.2899%

6.57

S

5.7351%

29.23

K

1.1016%

5.61

L

5.4893%

27.98

V

1.0074%

5.13

C

4.5388%

23.13

X

0.2902%

1.48

U

3.6308%

18.51

Z

0.2722%

1.39

D

3.3844%

17.25

J

0.1965%

1.00

P

3.1671%

16.14

Q

0.1962%

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