Research
What Grade 2 does to each letter
A novel prints 107,660 letters. Contracted braille writes 48,494 of them as letters, 45.0%. The rest are inside contractions, and the letters do not share the loss equally.
A chart of the alphabet gives every letter the same weight. A page of contracted braille does not. Some letters are mostly inside contractions, some hardly ever, and two cells spend most of their time meaning something other than their letter.
This is the same book and the same count as the study of which contractions do the work, read from the other side: letter by letter instead of sign by sign.
The method
- Question
- For each letter, how often is it still written as its own cell in Grade 2, which contractions take the rest, and what else is its cell used for?
- Compared against
- Nothing — this is a count of what this site’s translator wrote. How far that translator can be trusted is measured separately.
- Over
- The body text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 26,439 words and 107,660 letters.
- Counted as
- A printed letter is spelled when Grade 2 writes it with its own cell, and inside a contraction when a sign stands for it along with other letters. Separately, every time a letter’s cell appears in the Grade 2 text it is sorted by what it is doing there: the letter, a wordsign, part of a shortform, or the second cell of a two-cell contraction.
- Checked by
- For every letter, spelled plus inside contractions equals the number printed, and the jobs found for its cell add up to the number of times the cell is in the text. The count stops if either fails.
- Published as
- /data/alice-letters.tsv, one row for each letter, and the text itself, /data/alice-body.txt. The counting uses
BR.explainText(text)in /tools/engine.js.
The letters Grade 2 hides
The letter h is printed 7,374 times in the book and written as h only 1,213 times, 16.4%. The rest are inside “the” (2,077), “sh” (793), “th” (506) and “wh” (435) and other signs. After it come w (30.7%), n (31.8%), g (35.5%) and d (36.9%).
At the other end, x and z are never inside a contraction in this book, and p (93.0%), k (83.2%) and l (79.9%) seldom are.
| Letter | Cell | Printed | Spelled in Grade 2 | Share | Taken mostly by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | ⠁ | 8,788 | 4,428 | 50.4% | and 950, ar 679, said 460 |
| b | ⠃ | 1,476 | 720 | 48.8% | be 279, but 170, bb 132 |
| c | ⠉ | 2,396 | 1,602 | 66.9% | ch 284, could 83, con 64 |
| d | ⠙ | 4,926 | 1,816 | 36.9% | and 950, ed 919, said 460 |
| e | ⠑ | 13,569 | 5,543 | 40.9% | the 2,077, er 966, ed 919 |
| f | ⠋ | 2,000 | 792 | 39.6% | of 619, for 189, herself 83 |
| g | ⠛ | 2,531 | 898 | 35.5% | ing 983, gh 134, ought 97 |
| h | ⠓ | 7,374 | 1,213 | 16.4% | the 2,077, sh 793, th 506 |
| i | ⠊ | 7,508 | 3,099 | 41.3% | ing 983, in 916, it 592 |
| j | ⠚ | 146 | 94 | 64.4% | just 52 |
| k | ⠅ | 1,158 | 964 | 83.2% | know 92, like 85, work 9 |
| l | ⠇ | 4,709 | 3,763 | 79.9% | little 252, would 91, like 85 |
| m | ⠍ | 2,104 | 1,612 | 76.6% | some 87, time 82, much 54 |
| n | ⠝ | 7,009 | 2,229 | 31.8% | ing 983, and 950, in 916 |
| o | ⠕ | 8,142 | 3,988 | 49.0% | of 619, ou 441, ow 438 |
| p | ⠏ | 1,524 | 1,417 | 93.0% | perhaps 34, upon 27, people 26 |
| q | ⠟ | 209 | 130 | 62.2% | quite 53, question 21, quick 5 |
| r | ⠗ | 5,435 | 2,318 | 42.6% | er 966, ar 679, for 189 |
| s | ⠎ | 6,498 | 3,111 | 47.9% | sh 793, said 460, st 391 |
| t | ⠞ | 10,686 | 4,329 | 40.5% | the 2,077, that 600, it 592 |
| u | ⠥ | 3,465 | 1,329 | 38.4% | ou 441, you 396, but 170 |
| v | ⠧ | 845 | 493 | 58.3% | very 130, ever 126, have 76 |
| w | ⠺ | 2,674 | 820 | 30.7% | ow 438, wh 435, was 329 |
| x | ⠭ | 148 | 148 | 100.0% | — |
| y | ⠽ | 2,262 | 1,560 | 69.0% | you 396, very 130, your 55 |
| z | ⠵ | 78 | 78 | 100.0% | — |
Two cells that are mostly not their letter
Count the cells instead of the letters and the picture turns over for two of them. The book prints x 148 times, yet the cell for x is written 811 times: 592 of those are the word “it”, which that cell stands for when it is alone, and 71 are in the shortforms for “its” and “itself”. The cell for z is written 341 times for 78 printed z’s, because alone it is the word “as”.
For no other letter is the cell written more often than the letter is printed.
| Cell of | Times written | As the letter | As a wordsign | In shortforms | In two-cell contractions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a ⠁ | 4,695 | 4,428 | — | 267 | — |
| b ⠃ | 987 | 720 | 170 (but) | 97 | — |
| c ⠉ | 1,769 | 1,602 | 59 (can) | 107 | 1 |
| d ⠙ | 2,730 | 1,816 | 80 (do) | 697 | 137 |
| e ⠑ | 5,768 | 5,543 | 12 (every) | 12 | 201 |
| f ⠋ | 1,092 | 792 | 36 (from) | 258 | 6 |
| g ⠛ | 1,192 | 898 | 50 (go) | 167 | 77 |
| h ⠓ | 1,687 | 1,213 | 76 (have) | 161 | 237 |
| i ⠊ | 3,115 | 3,099 | — | 16 | — |
| j ⠚ | 146 | 94 | 52 (just) | — | — |
| k ⠅ | 1,064 | 964 | 3 (knowledge) | 5 | 92 |
| l ⠇ | 4,194 | 3,763 | 85 (like) | 290 | 56 |
| m ⠍ | 1,842 | 1,612 | 48 (more) | 170 | 12 |
| n ⠝ | 2,475 | 2,229 | 138 (not) | 12 | 96 |
| o ⠕ | 4,181 | 3,988 | — | 1 | 192 |
| p ⠏ | 1,466 | 1,417 | 13 (people) | 17 | 19 |
| q ⠟ | 209 | 130 | 53 (quite) | 5 | 21 |
| r ⠗ | 2,531 | 2,318 | 25 (rather) | 133 | 55 |
| s ⠎ | 3,955 | 3,111 | 152 (so) | 577 | 115 |
| t ⠞ | 4,824 | 4,329 | 300 (that) | 61 | 134 |
| u ⠥ | 1,400 | 1,329 | 14 (us) | — | 56 |
| v ⠧ | 631 | 493 | 130 (very) | 8 | — |
| w ⠺ | 1,003 | 820 | 30 (will) | 106 | 47 |
| x ⠭ | 811 | 148 | 592 (it) | 71 | — |
| y ⠽ | 2,054 | 1,560 | 396 (you) | 73 | 25 |
| z ⠵ | 341 | 78 | 263 (as) | — | — |
The cell for u is written 1 more time as part of an accented letter, the ù of “où”.
What this cannot tell you
- One book. These are the counts for one text of 1865. Another book has other words, and the shares will move with them.
- A translator, not a transcriber. This counts what software wrote; the accuracy study lists where it is known to differ from the reference.
- Counts, not difficulty. That a letter is rarely spelled does not make its cell hard to read or to learn. This measures how often, nothing else.