The Fry Sight Word List is made up of the most frequently used words in children's books, novels, articles and textbooks. The words are ranked in order of frequency. The list was compiled by Dr. Edward B. Fry in 1996.

The Fry Sight Words list is a more modern list of words than the Dolch list, and was extended to capture the most common 1,000 words. Dr. Edward Fry developed this expanded list in the 1950s (and updated it in 1980), based on the most common words to appear in reading materials used in Grades 3-9.

The Fry word list or “instant words” are widely accepted to contain the most used words in reading and writing. The list is divided into ten levels and then divided into groups of twenty-five words, based on frequency of use and difficulty.