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Top Five Letters of the Alphabet

A blog post by erin, posted on May 9, 2007 at 3:29 pm

Darren Rowse over at problogger has a neat project going on. If you submit a Top 5 list about anything you want, submit it to the site, and link to a couple of your favorite lists (yes, this means you have to read stuff. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun!), you could win $1001 dollars, courtesy of Chitika, get a ton of traffic and get hooked up with lots of other bloggers! So I figure, hey why not give it a go? Then I got stuck. I definitely used up all my good ideas on top ten lists (that princess list was a good idea!). On my bike ride home, I thought and thought (because thinking of top five lists is way more fun than thesis writing): I’m obsessed with baby names, I love the environment, I love women’s basketball, I watch a lot of television, I could cop out and try to link to my other blogs in my quest into become a millionaire blogger by whoring my work out, the list is endless. And now, I sit at my computer, trying to figure out what the hell to write, I realize, that in the end, it doesn’t matter. First, because the winner of this contest will be drawn at random. Second, Matt is the far more popular blogger on this site (I’m okay with it. I have my Top Model niche and my celebrity fan sites and it makes me happy!). Third, because this contest is over tomorrow and I better write something fast! Thus, I’m just going to write about my favorite letters of the alphabet. Why? Because I have favorite letters. It comes from writing this damn much. And being this neurotic.

Top Five Letters in the English Alphabet

#5: H
This choice is more for personal reasons that the actual awesomeness of the letter. For some reason, every year on Christmas Eve, TSN shows a children’s spelling bee. And every year my family (we don’t like each other much) watches it. When I was 11 or 12, a girl was asked to spell “H”. The following scene was pure comedy gold, with the perplexed girl and the dead-panning, stone-faced, poorly dressed moderator:

“Can I have the definition please?”

“H is the letter H in the English language.”

“Can I have the origin please?”

“It is an English letter.”

“Can I have it in a sentence please?”

“The eighth letter in the English alphabet is H.”

The poor girl spelled it wrong. However, I learned two important things: first, all letters can be spelled and second, you spell H like this: a-i-t-c-h. Who knew?!

#4: Z
ZED! That’s right, zed. It’s NOT zee and it never will be, you damn Americans. Why should you know this? Because the leader –the leader — of Men in Black was named Zed, in a world where all the agents were named after letters. If that doesn’t end this argument, I don’t what will. Plus, zzzzzzzzzzzzz is a pretty fun sound. Zebra. Zoo. Pizza. Puzzle. Pizazz. All fun words! They’re even better with exclamation points after: Zebra! Zoo! Pizza! Puzzle! Pizazz!

#3: Q
q is like that mom next door. She’s a little quirky and you don’t really ‘get’ her, but she’s always faithful and you know exactly what to expect. She’s never without u, she gardens on Tuesday afternoons and likes her magazines stack in reverse alphabetical order for reasons you’ll never understand. Until, one day, you play Scrabble and someone throws down qaid or qoph or qiviut on a triple-word square, and you discover that the cardigan-wearing, cookie-baking sweetheart with the mom jeans, minivan and bad hair has a very kinky sex life. And it disturbed you a little. Okay, it disturbs you A LOT.

#2: W
W is ridiculous. The sound it makes has no resonance with the sound you make to spell it. I don’t understand it AT ALL. wuh = double-you? No way man. But this is why I like W. It defies convention. It looks the alpha-phonetic rules of the English language in the eye and says “Fuck you man. That shit don’t fly with me.” Even worse (better?!) W is NOT a double u. It’s a double defiance!

#1: Y
At first glance, Y seems like a lame choice. It’s in a lot of words. It’s not a very strong or unique sound. Most names ending in Y are lame, especially boys names ending in why (I could totally beat up a Cory, a Cody, a Gary, a Barry, a Jay, any one of these boys. Bring ‘em on. And my name isn’t even Zed!). But Y is Y my first choice: it’s a consonant! It’s a vowel! And it’s a word! Especially in today’s brutalized text-messaging fueled English, Y is a perfectly acceptable spelling as it is a phonetical relation. Example: Y R U l8? I hate it, but since my current fan base consists of thirteen year old girls who are writing me fan mail like that, I need to get used to it. So while W is the loud mouth bad-ass rules-defying activist, Y is the dude who organized the protest, wore a suit and tie, wrote a professionally, yet strongly, worded letter to those in charge, and got face time with them. He’s the dude who gets shit done. Why else would X have to be between W and Y in the alphabet song anyways?

Here’s some Top Fives entered in the contest I really enjoyed! I’ll post more as I read more.

Top Five Tools Every Blogger Should Use by Scott

Top 5 Monkey Songs by Martin Breton

Shut Up And Write by Eli James

The Top 5 Things I Hate Drawing by Matt Glover

The Top 5 Strangest Things I’ve Learned While Blogging by Robert Hruzek

# 5 Top European Cities I’d move to next by Juergen Horn

Matt also wrote a Top Five about his favorite elements. I hope he submits it. Go check it out! His old blog is new again!

Let us know about the Top Five list you write!