Previous investigations into creak (vocal fry or pulse phonation) concentrated on two aspects: establishment of the physiological, acoustic, or perceptual nature of creak compared with other phonations; or separation of its characteristics in normal speech from pathological voices. The approach here is entirely different. Taking the phonetic and linguistic incidence of creak in normal speech in two accents of English as a starting point, quantitative description of its occurrence is provided. Data are taken from large numbers of speakers producing meaningful utterances in a recording task unrelated to voice quality. Support is given to the previous (unquantified) notion that creak accompanies utterance‐final low falls and may be a turn‐relinquishing signal. In addition, important cross‐accent and cross‐sex differences in the usage of creak are revealed. The results indicate that future descriptions of male‐female voice quality differences should acknowledge creak as an important sociophonetic marker. Furthermore, phonological accounts of accents should incorporate information about a community voice quality. Last, clinicians will benefit from a quantitative account of creak in “normal voice” and may be led to adjust their parameters of abnormality accordingly.