Why the Letter S Drives People Crazy (And What It Reveals About Language)
You're reading this sentence right now. Count how many times that curvy little snake appears. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Twelve. Just in that first paragraph. And I wasn't even trying.
The letter S is everywhere. Because of that, it's the third most common letter in English, trailing only E and T. It pluralizes our nouns, possessivizes our pronouns, and sneaks into words where you'd least expect it — island, debris, aisle. Consider this: silent. This leads to smug. Unavoidable Easy to understand, harder to ignore. Turns out it matters..
Some people genuinely hate it. As a visceral, grammatical grudge. Not as a casual annoyance. And the deeper you dig, the more you realize: that hatred tells us something fascinating about how language works, how brains process text, and what happens when writers decide to wage war on the alphabet.
What Is a Lipogram (And Why Would Anyone Write One)
A lipogram is a piece of writing that deliberately excludes one or more letters. In real terms, the most famous example? Consider this: Gadsby, a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. Fifty thousand words. Zero letter E The details matter here..
Not a single the, he, she, be, been, were, there, every, never. " Every sentence a puzzle. Consider this: "A man may walk" becomes "A man may wander on foot. Imagine the contortions. That's why " "She said" becomes "That woman remarked. Every paragraph a tightrope walk.
But E is the easy target. Day to day, it's the most common letter. Conquering it makes headlines Small thing, real impact..
S is different. So s is insidious. It's not just frequent — it's structural. Plurals. On the flip side, possessives. Third-person singular verbs. The entire scaffolding of English grammar leans on this one glyph Most people skip this — try not to..
The Oulipo Connection
The Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) — a French collective of writers and mathematicians founded in 1960 — treated constraints as creative fuel. Georges Perec wrote La Disparition (1969), a 300-page novel without E. Its English translation, A Void, also lacks E.
But Perec also wrote Les Revenentes — a novella using only the vowel E. No A, I, O, U. Just E. Think about it: over and over. *Eeeeeee But it adds up..
The point wasn't masochism. On top of that, it was revelation. Worth adding: constraints force language into corners where it reveals hidden capacities. Because of that, when you can't say "the cats slept," you must find another path. "Felines dozed.That's why " "Kittens napped. " "Whiskered creatures slumbered." Each alternative carries different rhythm, different imagery, different feeling.
Why People Actually Hate the Letter S
It's not just lipogram enthusiasts. Regular readers, writers, even kids learning to read — some develop a genuine aversion. Here's why.
The Visual Fatigue Factor
S is visually noisy. In a dense paragraph, dozens of S characters create a subconscious "static.That double curve — top bending one way, bottom the other — creates a tiny moment of cognitive friction every time your eye lands on it. " Your brain processes them automatically, but the effort accumulates.
Compare:
The serpent slithered silently across the sand.
Versus:
The snake crept quietly over the grains.
Same meaning. Think about it: fewer curves. Practically speaking, the second sentence feels cleaner. Lighter. That's not imagination — it's visual processing load Worth keeping that in mind..
The Hiss Factor
Phonetically, S is a voiceless alveolar fricative. Worth adding: air forced through a narrow channel. Sssss. It's the sound of steam escaping. A snake warning. A radiator leaking.
Languages vary wildly in S-frequency. Hawaiian has no S at all. Japanese has no native S (though borrowed words brought it in). Rotokas, a language of Papua New Guinea, uses only twelve letters — no S.
English? Think about it: we love our hiss. Essence. Plus, suspense. Which means assess. But possess. Success. The letter appears in roughly 6.3% of all letters in typical English text. That's one in sixteen characters. Constant low-grade hissing.
Some people are genuinely sensitive to this. Misophonia for phonemes. The repetition grates Worth keeping that in mind..
The Grammatical Overload
Here's the structural problem: S does too much work.
- Plural marker: cat → cats
- Possessive marker: cat → cat's
- Third-person singular verb: run → runs
- Contraction of is: it's, he's, she's
- Contraction of has: he's, she's, it's
- Contraction of us: let's
One letter. Six distinct grammatical jobs. That's why that's bad design. And it's like using a single key for your front door, car, office, safe, bike lock, and diary. When that key jams, everything locks up Which is the point..
Children learning to write often overgeneralize S. In practice, *Sheeps. In practice, mouses. He go's. She do's.And * They're not wrong — they're detecting a pattern and applying it logically. Because of that, english breaks its own rule constantly. Worth adding: Children. Oxen. Mice. Went. Did. The S-pattern is a trap And that's really what it comes down to..
How Writers Work Around It (When They Choose To)
You don't need to write a full lipogram to reduce S-load. Professional writers — copywriters, poets, speechwriters — do this instinctively.
Verb Choice Over Noun Pluralization
Weak: The cats chase the mice. Stronger: Felines pursue rodents.
Weak: Users access systems. Stronger: People enter platforms.
Every plural noun you eliminate removes an S. Every singular verb you swap for a plural subject removes an S. On top of that, The system works → *Systems work. * One S saved.
Possessive Restructuring
John's car → the car John drives The company's policy → *policy from the
firm*
By shifting the possessive from a suffix to a prepositional phrase, you break the chain of sibilance. Think about it: it slows the reader down slightly, but it clears the visual and auditory clutter. It replaces a sharp, stabbing sound with a flowing, rhythmic cadence.
The Rhythmic Pivot
Great prose relies on contrast. These sounds are percussive. Practically speaking, if a paragraph is heavy with "S" sounds, a skilled writer will pivot to "plosives"—letters like P, T, K, B, D, and G. They act as anchors, grounding the airy, floating quality of the sibilance Worth keeping that in mind..
Consider the difference between: "The soft sea spray splashed across the shore." (Airy, drifting, almost hypnotic) "The cold tide beat back the gray rock." (Hard, definitive, grounded)
The first sentence is a wash of sound; the second is a series of strikes. By alternating these textures, a writer prevents the reader from falling into a "hissing trance," ensuring that the meaning of the sentence isn't lost in the noise of its own delivery.
The Psychological Weight of the Sibilant
The bottom line: the prevalence of the S is more than a linguistic quirk; it is a psychological trigger. In literature, sibilance is often used intentionally to evoke specific moods. In real terms, a villain who speaks in sibilants feels sinister, calculating, and serpentine. A lover who whispers in sibilants feels intimate and breathy.
But when these sounds appear by accident—through clumsy phrasing or repetitive grammar—the effect is different. Think about it: it creates a sense of friction. The reader doesn't notice the "S" consciously, but they feel a subtle tension, a mental fatigue that makes the text feel "thick" or "stuffy." It is the literary equivalent of a humming lightbulb in a quiet room: you don't realize it's there until it's turned off Which is the point..
Conclusion
The letter S is the workhorse of the English language, carrying the burden of plurality, possession, and conjugation. But like any tool used too frequently, it can become a blunt instrument. When we over-rely on the hiss, we clutter our visual field and fatigue our auditory imagination.
By consciously diversifying our vocabulary, restructuring our possessives, and balancing sibilance with plosives, we can strip away the subconscious static. The meaning emerges. The goal isn't to purge the letter entirely—that would be an exercise in frustration—but to treat it as a seasoning rather than the main course. When you lighten the S-load, the prose breathes. The noise vanishes, leaving behind a clarity that allows the reader to focus on the story, rather than the sound The details matter here..
