English homophones

citing/sighting/siting

"citing" is a verb; "sighting" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "citing" arrives as a verb, while "sighting" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

No shared spelling stem: "citing" is 6 letters, "sighting" is 8; only the sound ties them.
No shared spelling stem: "citing" is 6 letters, "siting" is 6; only the sound ties them.
Shared stem "si" then splits - "sighting" (8 letters) vs "siting" (6).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across citing, sighting, siting: gint. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

citing
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVCC
Inventory cgint · private c
sighting
8 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCCVCC
Inventory ghinst · private hs
siting
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVCC
Inventory ginst · private s

Pick the spelling from the meaning

Write "citing" when you mean: present participle and gerund of cite
Write "sighting" when you mean: The act of catching sight of something, especially something searched for.
Write "siting" when you mean: present participle and gerund of site

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

citing ← cciting · ciitng · citign · citingg · citinng · citnig
sighting ← isghting · sgihting · sigghting · sighhting · sighitng · sightign
siting ← isting · siitng · sitign · sitingg · sitinng · sitnig

Each spelling

citing

verb · /ˈsaɪtɪŋ/ · #7,777 frequency

present participle and gerund of cite

sighting

noun · /ˈsaɪtɪŋ/ · #19,697 frequency

The act of catching sight of something, especially something searched for.

siting

verb · /ˈsaɪtɪŋ/ · #42,898 frequency

present participle and gerund of site

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (citing, sighting, siting). Here's where to go from here.

"citing" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #7,777 in English). Full entry
Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: site · sight · cite. Nearby cluster
Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.