As background, sight words or high frequency words are the words that fluent readers must recognize instantly and with little effort. These words appear most frequently in reading and writing in the English language.
- Dr. Fry's research findings:
- 25 words make up one-third of all published text.
- 100 words comprise 50% of all of the words found in publications.
- 300 words make up 65% of all written material.
The Fry list is one of many lists of sight words. The other popular well known list are the Dolch words.
It is said that the Dolch word lists inspired Dr Suess to try to write an entire book of high interest but using all the simple Dolch word list. The result is the Cat in the Hat. True or urban academic legend?
