this post was submitted on 07 May 2026
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i am trying to see if there is any common consensus.

do not try and associate this question with real-world objects or ideas. Purely choose a color based on the nature of the letter E.

i personally pick green but I might be tweakin

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[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I don't even understand the question.

I mean, I know what you're asking, but I don't know how to answer it. Letters don't have colours. They don't have anything. Maybe it's my aphantasia, but I don't understand how a letter can have an innate colour or what that would even mean.

[–] TheV2@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Letters don't have colors, but people may associate a specific color with a letter. It could be influenced by logos, symbols and just about anything that affected us personally in our life. It's not a logical binding.

E.g. I can imagine that a lot of people will associate the letter "x" with the color red, because they are often displayed in that color, especially when it symbolizes deletion. Perhaps someone was a big fan of the pro wrestling stable D-Generation X and therefore they see x in a green color. Another person thinks of a black X, because they are addicted to Twitter.

However I think most of us don't know why exactly we associate a color to a letter and it's the result of a looooot of links and associations.

[–] CombatWombat@feddit.online 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm also aphantasiac and similarly have no idea what this question could possibly mean.

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't have aphantasia nor synesthesia and I still wouldn't be able to say something other than just the common, printed black ink. I'm floored that there is such a consensus towards what-is-effectively-teal here. Is the majority of Lemmy denizens synesthetic?!

[–] Pelicanen@fedia.io 1 points 17 hours ago

I don't have any of those either, but if I try to think of the letter and then just "feel" a color, what pops up is green. I'm not sure if it's the shape or the sound, or that green has two Es in its name, but that's the color that appears for me.

[–] kyonshi@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not aphantasia, people with synesthesia connect different symbols and numbers with different colors...

(I say that, but it's actually more diverse than that, but the letter/number to color one seems to be the most prevalent)

... it technically is a neurological disorder where the signals get mixed up in the brain, although I haven't met someone with it yet who'd give it up.

[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Most people in this thread are coming up with an answer though. They can't all have synesthesia!

Most people here clearly see some connection, or have some sort of "default colour" for the letter.

But unless I picked a colour at random, I couldn't answer this question.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

I dont have synesthesia, but in this moment when asked to imagine "E", I pictured it in my mind's eye, and it was kind of a muted dark red.

If you asked me tomorrow who knows.

[–] kyonshi@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But the question is: how many who don't see a color would post in this thread at all?

And if they do have synesthesia, how many self-select to places like piefed because they feel different from others.

[–] kyonshi@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Actually I just checked and estimates of the prevalence have gone up to 1 in 4 people having it. I long suspected that more people have it then actually realize, because one of the core experiences many of us have is to realize that what we have is not actually "normal"

[–] kyonshi@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

I actually posted a poll on mastodon to check how many have it. Might be interesting

https://dice.camp/@kyonshi/116533307473323600