HvsHzWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: H is a character, Hz is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“H” is a character and “Hz” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#409
“H” frequency rank
#12,310
“Hz” frequency rank
12719
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature H Hz
Definition achter Buchstabe des lateinischen Alphabets Hertz

Letter map: H vs Hz

Shared letters muted; letters that set H and Hz apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

1 ch
H
2 ch
Hz

Role in the sentence - H and Hz

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: H is acharacter and Hzanabbrev. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “H” sits inside “Hz”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12719, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

H is recorded at frequency rank #409, classified as acharacter, pronounced [haː]. Hz is at rank #12,310, tagged as anabbrev.

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 12719, this pair ranks #1,962,458 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of H vs Hz

Shared letters: h. Private to "H": -. Private to "Hz": z.

"H" · 1 letters · shape C  ·  "Hz" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "H" for "Hz" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "H" is a character and "Hz" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "H" or "Hz"?
"H" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #409 in our German list, against #12,310 for "Hz". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "H" and "Hz". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "H" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Hz" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,962,458 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "H" and "Hz" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "haze vs Hz". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,962,458 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