Presented here is an analysis of letter frequency distributions from different source materials. Such results can be used to inform the design of, and assess the merits of, various keyboard layouts.
The data was generated from three very different sources of text:
- Data generated using a corpus comprising a variety of books from Project Guttenberg, the same as used by carpalx.
- The text from the 100 most popular pages on Wikipedia, the list was obtained from this page.
- The source code and documentation from the Linux source codebase.
This data can be used as input for the Keyboard Layout Analyzer. You can also use them in the Web interface to the Analyzer.
| Books (char %) | Wikipedia (char %) | Linux source (char %) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E | 11.79 | E | 9.67 | E | 8.05 |
| T | 8.51 | A | 6.99 | _ | 7.21 |
| A | 7.66 | I | 6.22 | T | 6.25 |
| O | 7.37 | T | 6.21 | I | 5.36 |
| I | 6.59 | R | 6.05 | R | 5.08 |
| N | 6.54 | N | 5.93 | S | 4.83 |
| H | 5.97 | O | 5.71 | A | 4.54 |
| S | 5.96 | S | 5.06 | N | 4.39 |
| R | 5.47 | L | 3.49 | C | 4.08 |
| D | 4.25 | _ | 3.29 | D | 3.92 |
| L | 3.92 | H | 3.27 | O | 3.53 |
| U | 2.76 | D | 3.17 | L | 3.01 |
| M | 2.56 | C | 2.82 | F | 2.88 |
| W | 2.28 | M | 2.38 | P | 2.86 |
| C | 2.27 | U | 2.17 | 0 | 2.73 |
| F | 2.07 | . | 2.11 | M | 2.50 |
| Y | 2.00 | P | 1.78 | U | 2.47 |
| G | 1.91 | G | 1.70 | X | 1.54 |
| , | 1.82 | F | 1.63 | G | 1.52 |
| P | 1.57 | 1 | 1.63 | , | 1.50 |
| B | 1.48 | B | 1.49 | H | 1.48 |
| . | 1.14 | 0 | 1.43 | B | 1.47 |
| V | 0.91 | 2 | 1.41 | V | 1.34 |
| K | 0.78 | Y | 1.35 | * | 1.26 |
| " | 0.72 | , | 1.30 | ) | 1.22 |
| ' | 0.30 | W | 1.26 | ( | 1.22 |
| - | 0.25 | V | 1.07 | ; | 1.16 |
| ; | 0.22 | * | 0.83 | - | 0.90 |
| ? | 0.15 | 9 | 0.71 | 1 | 0.86 |
| J | 0.14 | " | 0.68 | K | 0.85 |
| X | 0.14 | K | 0.67 | = | 0.77 |
| ! | 0.11 | 3 | 0.53 | W | 0.71 |
| Q | 0.10 | 8 | 0.47 | 2 | 0.71 |
| : | 0.07 | 4 | 0.44 | Y | 0.62 |
| Z | 0.06 | 7 | 0.44 | > | 0.61 |
| ) | 0.03 | 5 | 0.44 | / | 0.60 |
| ( | 0.03 | 6 | 0.42 | # | 0.50 |
| 0 | 0.02 | ( | 0.40 | . | 0.49 |
| 1 | 0.01 | ) | 0.40 | 3 | 0.43 |
| 2 | 0.01 | J | 0.38 | 4 | 0.40 |
| _ | 0.01 | - | 0.37 | " | 0.34 |
| * | 0.01 | [ | 0.35 | Q | 0.32 |
| 5 | 0.01 | ] | 0.35 | 8 | 0.32 |
| 3 | 0.00 | ^ | 0.27 | { | 0.31 |
| 4 | 0.00 | ' | 0.26 | } | 0.31 |
| 8 | 0.00 | : | 0.25 | 6 | 0.29 |
| 9 | 0.00 | X | 0.16 | 5 | 0.25 |
| 7 | 0.00 | Z | 0.13 | & | 0.23 |
| 6 | 0.00 | = | 0.08 | 7 | 0.18 |
| / | 0.00 | ; | 0.07 | Z | 0.18 |
| [ | 0.00 | Q | 0.07 | : | 0.18 |
| ] | 0.00 | / | 0.06 | 9 | 0.15 |
| & | 0.00 | & | 0.03 | < | 0.15 |
| + | 0.00 | $ | 0.03 | [ | 0.13 |
| @ | 0.00 | % | 0.02 | ] | 0.13 |
| $ | 0.00 | # | 0.01 | \ | 0.12 |
| % | 0.00 | } | 0.01 | + | 0.11 |
| # | 0.00 | { | 0.01 | | | 0.09 |
| ~ | 0.00 | ? | 0.01 | % | 0.08 |
| > | 0.00 | | | 0.01 | ! | 0.07 |
| < | 0.00 | ! | 0.01 | J | 0.06 |
| = | 0.00 | \ | 0.00 | @ | 0.04 |
| { | 0.00 | + | 0.00 | ' | 0.04 |
| } | 0.00 | @ | 0.00 | ` | 0.02 |
| > | 0.00 | ~ | 0.02 | ||
| ~ | 0.00 | ? | 0.01 | ||
| < | 0.00 | $ | 0.01 | ||
| ` | 0.00 | ^ | 0.00 | ||