It is generally accepted that a word’s emotional valence (i.e., whether a word is perceived as positive, negative or neutral) influences how it is accessed and remembered. There is also evidence that the affective content of words is represented in non-arbitrary sound-meaning associations, i.e., emotional sound symbolism. We investigated whether more extensive statistical relationships exist between the surface form properties of English words and ratings of their emotional valence, i.e., *form typicality*. We found significant form typicality for both valence and extremity of valence (the absolute distance from the midpoint of the rating scale, regardless of polarity). Next, using behavioural megastudy datasets, we show that measures of emotional form typicality are more consistent predictors of lexical access during written and auditory lexical decision and reading aloud than valence. Form-valence typicality was also a significant predictor of recognition memory performance. These findings show non-arbitrary form-valence mappings in English are accessed automatically during language and verbal memory processing.