Do you have a favorite letter? The sound or typeface varieties of a letter can really catch us. For more about the visual and emotional properties of various letters, check out Simon Garfield’s book about fonts, Just My Type. Grant also recommends One-Letter Words by Craig Conley, a surprisingly lengthy dictionary of words made up of just one letter. This is just a segment of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Favorite Letters of the Alphabet”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grant. This is Dorothy Ann. I am calling from Dallas, Texas, although I am not a Texan.
Oh, you’re not a Texan. Where are you from? What are you doing there? Yeah. What are you doing in Dallas?
I’m actually from the West Coast, but my husband and I moved out here about two years ago. And are actually right in the middle of packing to move to Michigan in about two weeks.
Well, we’re on there, too, so don’t forget to tune us in. What can we help you with today, Dorothy Ann?
When I was a little girl, you know, maybe even three years old, before I could really read, I really had a favorite letter, which was the letter W. And it’s not really important to my name or the street I grew up on, but I loved it. And so much so that my mom even made me a little pink pillow with little baby animals on it in the shape of the letter W, and it was my favorite.
Oh, really? And as I got older, I thought it was strange to learn that other people didn’t have favorite letters, because I felt very strongly about Ws. I would point them out as my mom read me a story or a street sign that had one on there. So I was wondering if you all have a favorite letter, and if so, why?
How cute is that? Well, Dorothea, I have to ask, what do you think made you have a crush on the letter W?
Well, I talked to my mom the other day about this, and she said that I always liked that it was unique and that it had more than one syllable. So where all the other letters had, you know, one, it was, you know, a few. I think I also liked the shape, but it’s not particularly unique. You know, an M looks quite like a W, just upside down. I think I just liked it. It just struck me. But I guess probably the syllables is what I liked best about it.
W. Yeah, yeah. If you’re a real little kid and you get that, how many syllables is it? W? Three syllables? That’s pretty cool, right?
Right. Well, I had a favorite letter. How about you, Grant? As an adult, actually. Let me hear yours. What was yours? Let me guess. Let me guess. T.
No. I don’t know what. No. You want to guess, Dorotheanne?
L. Well, you’re close. It’s M.
M, okay. It’s a Martha Martha. Exactly. I mean, and I’m like you. I thought everybody had a favorite letter. Mine was M for as long as I can remember because it was the first letter in my name. Just like five was my favorite number because that was the first point where I really got feeling competent with numbers when I was five years old. I thought five was my number. And M was my letter. And honestly, to this day, if I’m filling out a form and it asks the gender, M or F, I always reach for the M first. I have to stop myself. There have been times when I have checked the M for the gender because I’m so drawn to that letter.
You’ll end up like my wife, who a couple of years ago here in California was listed as a male on her license.
Oh, really? So, Dorotheanne, if you still have that W pillow, maybe you could lend it to me sometimes and I could, you know, turn it upside down. I wanted to say my favorite letter was Q, but for more practical reasons.
More practical reasons. Yeah. Once I got involved in typography, I did information technology, computer support for advertising agencies and publishing companies in New York in the early 90s. Yeah. And I often had to work with the big font libraries, tens of thousands of different little files and things. And I started to learn how to recognize the letters and discovered, as people usually do, that the Q is usually very distinctive in a lot of typefaces. They do incredibly interesting things with the little swoosh at the end of it, right? And even with the lowercase Q. And so you begin to love the Q because it’s where the variation is most at play in a typeface.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So how’s that?
That’s interesting. Typography is fabulous. I’ve definitely been known to get typography books for Christmas and just stare at different fonts.
There we go. It’s in your blood. I can relate. It’s hardwired in you, Dorothy Ann. Yeah. Did you get Just My Type? There’s one called Just My Type, I think.
I haven’t. I’ll look that up. Yeah, check it out. Thank you so much for calling and sharing your favorite letter with us.
Definitely. M and Q. Nice to know. Take care of yourself. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. What is your favorite letter? And why? And why? 877-929-9673. Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.
