xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

This comic is Randall's "design notes" for the English alphabet. The comic lists the A-to-Z alphabet, in black block letters, from left to right. At the top, Randall lists the vowels and appreciates how they are spaced. Interestingly, there are either three or five consonant letters between every consecutive pair of vowel letters in the alphabet. Forming these supposed design notes are many red annotations.

The title text jokes about the pick-up line "If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together.", where the letters U and I are pronounced like the pronouns "you" and "I". It is such a corny act of flirtation that any recipient of it could easily have a rejection (or a flirty acceptance if they so wish) ready to respond within an appropriate vein. As well as reflecting the diagram's noted preference for well-spaced vowels, it might be presumed that anyone (unironically) using the " U and I" line might be left dumbfounded at the rather technical nature of the riposte. This pickup line was also the subject of 1069: Alphabet. The word "ruin" also contains the two letters next to each other, which rather subverts the idea that putting them together results in something cute. Alternatively, the distance ("spacing") between the flirters would change ("be ruined") if they got together, subverting the meaning of "ruin" in a more positive way.

Letter	Randall's note	Explanation
A	"Strong start!"	A is described favorably as the start.
B	"Decent consonants but no real heavy hitters here in the first third ("D" is solid, at least)"	Randall considers the five early consonants B, C, D, F, and G to be acceptable but nothing special, except D which he considers solid. It's not clear whether he specifically is referring to their appearance or what sound they represent. In English phonology, D is the voiced alveolar plosive.
C
D
E
F
G
H	"Hi!"	The word "Hi" appears uninterrupted when the letters of the English alphabet are listed A-to-Z.
I
	"The dotted letters are friends!"	Randall notes and appreciates the shared tittle (dot) in the lowercase letters i and j, calling them "friends". The separate dots and main strokes could also be interpreted as the heads and torsos of two reductionist character drawings. The two letters are the respective mathematical and electrical-engineering notations of the square root of -1, and so may be considered both professionally and personally in a close relationship, as well as neighbours. In the Netherlands, a digraph, or two letters representing one sound (such as "CH" and "SH" in English) is formed from I and J, creating IJ; it is considered distinct from either I or J. It should be noted that J appeared sometime around the Middle Ages as a variant of I, explaining why they look similar and are located together in the alphabet.
J
	"Jk (lol)"	Like "Hi", the letters J and K are next to each other in the English alphabet. "Jk" is an initialism for "just kidding", similar to "LOL" for "laugh out loud".
K
L to P	"Part that's fun to sing"	In the standard "alphabet song" in the US (sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"), most letters occur upon the beat of an easy and sedate tempo. However, to make it both scan and rhyme, the letters L to P are run through at double the tempo. This provides a welcome departure from the rhythm that has been slow and uniform up to that point, and the rapidity of the letters almost makes them feel like a strange word ("elemenopee") rather than a sequence of alphabetic letters. The letter sounds also require the involvement of several different parts of the mouth, including a rapid tongue movement, which may feel more fun to do than the preceding parts.
M	"Weird how the line between "M" and "N" is the halfway mark. They're similar, but "MN" only shows up in fancy words like "mnemonic", "column", "amnesty", and "hymn". Significance??"	Randall finds it weird that the dividing line between the two halves of the alphabet would go between M and N. Indeed, it is a bit odd that the two letters, which look similar and represent similar sounds, are placed in such a way that they would be split apart when the alphabet is written out on two lines. He also lists several words that contain MN in sequence and speculates on the significance of this rare bigram seemingly only being used for "fancy" words.
N
	"No"	Like "Hi", the word "No" appears uninterrupted in the English alphabet.
O
P
Q	"Why is this here?"	Randall considers Q strange, likely because the sound it denotes in English could be replaced with the sequence "KW," and Q almost never appears on its own in English, but instead exclusively through the bigram QU. The modern English alphabet evolved from the Phoenician alphabet, where the letter Q represented a voiceless uvular plosive, a sound similar to /k/ but with the tongue pushed back. Even though the Greeks who learned to write from them did not have this sound, they kept the letter because Arabic numerals hadn't been invented yet and they adopted it to represent the number 90. Later, a group called the Etruscans learned to write from them, and their language not only had no /q/ sound, they did not have a /g/ (hard g as in 'ghost') sound either; this resulted in an alphabet where they had three letters for (what was to them) the same sound; C, K, and Q. The Romans who learned to write from the Etruscans eventually established a rule that Q was to be used for back vowels /o/ and /u/ (as well as developing G to distinguish it from C), a tradition carried on by the French and finally the English, hence why Q today is almost always followed by a U (as well as why C exists). "Why is this here?" could also be referring to Q's position in the alphabet; the surrounding consonants P, R, S, and T are all rather frequently used in English, while Q is one of the least-used letters (varying sources all list Q, J, X, and Z as the least frequent letter in English).
R	"Strong cluster!"	Randall considers RST a strong cluster of consonants, though again it is unclear whether he refers to their visual design or to the sounds they represent. The use of an RST code is a traditional way of describing the reception quality of radio communications. Also, RST are part of the widely recognized five most common consonants in the English language, RSTLN. Three out of the five are listed together in the alphabet.
S
T
	"...Listen. Maybe we should've stopped at "T"."	The comment that the alphabet may have been better if it had stopped at T is potentially a reference to the fact that the original Phoenician script, which is the ancestor of many modern scripts including English, had as its last letter Taw, which the modern letter T is derived from. It is still the last letter of the modern Hebrew alphabet, although the Greek alphabet added several letters after it, some of which persist into modern English. Randall seems to believe that the Phoenician script was fine as-is and that the letters U-Z are unnecessary or "haunted".
U	"Weirdest of the main 5 vowels by far"	Randall is not a fan of the letter U and thinks it is the weirdest of the five vowels. U is the least frequent of the five main vowels (though still more frequent than Y), and the sounds it tends to represent are often considered amusing by English speakers.
V to Z	"Haunted letters (keep out!!)"	The letters V, W, X, Y, and Z are "haunted".
V	"??"	Randall seems to be confused about VW. Possible confusion stems from the fact that W is called "double U" rather than "double V". Both W and U are derived from V, which might explain a lot. He may also be confused as to why a make of car is appearing in the alphabet.
W
X	"Not sure this is even a letter. Did you include a number by mistake?"	Randall questions whether X is even a letter. As Randall is a physicist, it is likely he is referring to how the letter is likely encountered more often as a variable representing a number in mathematics and algebra than as a letter for scientists. Alternatively, he could be referring to the Roman numeral X, though he doesn't have this kind of issue with I, V, L, C, D or M. Alternatively, as mentioned under Q, it may be that X represents a combination of sounds that could instead be written as CS or KS, or Z at the start of a word, since X frequently makes the /z/ sound word-initially.
Y	"?"	At the end of the vowel list at the top, Randall uses a question mark to indicate the ambiguous nature of Y, which can function both as a vowel and a consonant depending on the context. Its name also sounds like "why", which is a very common question.
Z