guidesvstheirWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: guides is a noun, their is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“guides” is a noun and “their” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,409
“guides” frequency rank
#11,131
“their” frequency rank
50540
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature guides their
Definition Plural des Substantivs guide ihr

Letter map: guides vs their

Shared letters muted; letters that set guides and their apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. guides runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against their's 5 (CCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
guides
5 ch
their

Part-of-speech tell for guides / their

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: guides is anoun and theirapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50540, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

guides is recorded at frequency rank #39,409, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. their is at rank #11,131, tagged as apron, pronounced […].

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 50540, this pair ranks #1,169,808 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of guides vs their

Shared letters: ei. Private to "guides": dgsu. Private to "their": hrt.

"guides" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "their" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • guides ← gguides · giudes · gudies · guiddes · guidess · guidse · guieds · ugides
  • their ← hteir · tehir · theirr · theri · thheir · thier · ttheir

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "guides" and "their" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "guides" is a noun and "their" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "guides" or "their" show up more?
"their" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,131 in our German list, against #39,409 for "guides". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "guides" vs "their" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "guides" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "their" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,169,808 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "guides" and "their" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guides vs puzzles". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #1,169,808 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list