writtenvsWSWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: written is a verb, WS is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“written” is a verb and “WS” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,644
“written” frequency rank
#21,852
“WS” frequency rank
65496
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature written WS
Definition Partizip Perfekt (past participle) des Verbs write Wintersemester

Letter map: written vs WS

Shared letters muted; letters that set written and WS apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

7 ch
written
2 ch
WS

Part-of-speech tell for written / WS

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: written is averb and WSanabbrev. On the page they differ by 5 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65496, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

written is recorded at frequency rank #43,644, classified as averb, pronounced […]. WS is at rank #21,852, tagged as anabbrev, 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 65496, this pair ranks #604,894 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of written vs WS

Shared letters: w. Private to "written": einrt. Private to "WS": s.

"written" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC  ·  "WS" · 2 letters · shape CC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • writtenrwitten · wirtten · writen · writetn · writtenn · writtne · wrritten · wrtiten

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "written" for "WS" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "written" is a verb and "WS" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "written" or "WS" show up more?
"WS" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,852 in our German list, against #43,644 for "written". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "written" vs "WS" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "written" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "WS" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #604,894 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "written" and "WS" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs written". 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 #604,894 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