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The /W/orst Letter

2020-12-11 · list · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Projects) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: self promotion, fundraising ask

Framed as a Dear Hank and John question, Hank comically ranks the names of English letters by how they are pronounced, putting W dead last and explaining that printers named it after two U's, then gives the last call for the Awesome Socks Club.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A Dear Hank and John question: we spell letters with letters; ranks 1-2, vowels and E-sound consonants

  • ★ Hank frames the video as a question from Debbie in the Dear Hank and John inbox, one he has asked himself for decades: we spell letters with letters. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Dear Hank and John
  • ★★ Hank ranks the names of the letters by how they are pronounced, putting the vowels first because they get to do whatever they want. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Ranks 3-8: F/M/N/S, J and K, Q, X and Z, Y

  • ★★ Second come consonants named with a final 'ee' sound (C, T, V, B), which make perfect sense; Hank wonders why that system isn't carried through the alphabet. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Third come F, M, N and S, whose names put the consonant at the end; switching them to the 'ee' system fails because S would become C. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Fourth come J and K, which do their own thing: K could be 'key', but J can't be 'gee' because G already exists. (playful) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Fifth, among the misfit letters, is Q, which Hank finds fittingly weird, though we might not need it at all: 'queen' could be spelled K-W-E-E-N. (playful) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says X stands out on its own because it shouldn't exist: it is just K-S; Z also stands apart. (playful) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Among the three worst letter names is Y, which could have been 'yee' and is unacceptable. (playful) — 00:01:27

00:01:51 — H second to last, W dead last, and how printers named W 'double U'

  • ★★ Second to last is H, whose name lacks the H sound unless you say it the British way, 'haitch', which Hank thinks we should; at least it contains the letter H. (playful) — 00:01:51
  • ★★★ Hank ranks W dead last: the only three-syllable letter name, the only one referencing another letter, the only one not containing its own sound; it just describes its shape, poorly. (playful) — 00:01:51
  • ★★ Hank says W is, depending on how you count, the youngest letter, reaching its final form after the printing press; printers named it after the two U's they used for the 'wah' sound. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ Hank says W looks like a double V because V's and U's were for a while kind of interchangeable. — 00:02:29

00:02:58 — Pet theory about printers' U's; last day to join the Awesome Socks Club; answer to John's 'What's next?'

  • ★ Hank's unsupported pet theory: printers had more V's lying around because U's were more useful, so using two U's would use up all their U's; he admits making the video partly for that line. (joke, speculative) — 00:02:58
  • ★★★ Hank tells viewers it is the last day to join the Awesome Socks Club at awesomesocks.club/vlogbrothers, or to ask someone to sign them up. — 00:02:58 · Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ Hank says socks come from a different artist each month of 2021, but new members get two pairs in February because they ran out of socks, then one a month. — 00:02:58 · Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ Hank says all the sock club's profits will go to decreasing maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone. — 00:02:58 · Awesome Socks Club, maternal death, child mortality, Sierra Leone
  • ★★ Answering John's 'What's next?', Hank says whatever comes next, it ain't gonna be little. — 00:03:41

Humor (dominant)

  • Hank imagines carrying the ee letter-name system through the alphabet, reaching F as "fee". — 00:00:29

    “B, C, D, E, Fee… Why?”

  • Renaming F, M, N and S on the 'ee' pattern breaks down at S. — 00:00:58

    “which if you do that with S, you get C. Come on!”

  • Hank ranks W dead last as the letter whose name refers to another letter. — 00:01:51

    “W? It just describes its own shape.”

  • Hank's pet theory for why printers doubled U rather than V. — 00:02:58

    “So using two U's all the time would use up all of their U's.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: English alphabet · letter W

Also: Awesome Socks Club · child mortality · Dear Hank and John · maternal death · printing press · Sierra Leone

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