F tier
F tier is the lowest rank on a tier list, borrowed from the failing grade in the American school system and used for options considered outright bad.
F tier is optional. Many tier lists stop at D, and the ones that include F tend to do so for emphasis or humour - it is the rank people reach for when D does not feel harsh enough. Note the gap in the sequence: there is no E tier, because the scale borrows the American school grading convention, which skips E as well.
What belongs in F tier
F tier works best when it is nearly empty. One or two entries at the bottom read as a strong statement; a crowded F tier reads as a complaint about the whole subject rather than a ranking of it.
F tier in practice
F tier is where people put the character that lost to a patch three years ago and never recovered, the film that wasted a cast, or the flavour that should not have been manufactured. Its value comes from restraint: a list with one entry in F makes a point, and a list with fifteen makes none.
The mistake people make with F tier
Because F is the funniest rank to use, it attracts joke placements. That is fine for a casual list, but it makes the ranking useless to anyone reading it for information - which is worth deciding before you start rather than after.
F tier questions
- Why is there no E tier?
- Because the scale borrows American school grading, which also skips E. Grades run A, B, C, D, F, with F for "fail" - the letter E was dropped historically to avoid it being read as "excellent". Tier lists inherited the gap along with the convention.
- Do all tier lists have an F tier?
- No. F is optional and plenty of lists stop at D. It tends to appear when someone wants a rank that reads as a verdict rather than a rating, which is why it is common on comedic lists and rarer on analytical ones.