all'svsalleysTell them apart

Quick tell: all's is a contraction, alleys is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“all's” is a contraction and “alleys” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,679
“all's” frequency rank
#26,672
“alleys” frequency rank
57351
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature all's alleys
Definition Contraction of all + is. plural of alley

Letter map: all's vs alleys

Shared letters muted; letters that set all's and alleys apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. all's runs 4 letters (VCCC) against alleys's 6 (VCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
all's
6 ch
alleys

Role in the sentence - all's and alleys

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: all's is acontraction and alleysanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57351, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

all's is recorded at frequency rank #30,679, classified as acontraction. alleys is at rank #26,672, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈæ.liz/.

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 57351, this pair ranks #119,908 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of all's vs alleys

Shared letters: als. Private to "all's": -. Private to "alleys": ey.

"all's" · 4 letters · shape VCCC  ·  "alleys" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alleys ← alelys · aleys · allesy · alleyss · alleyys · allyes · laleys

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "all's" and "alleys" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "all's" is a contraction and "alleys" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "all's" or "alleys" show up more?
"alleys" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,672 in our English list, against #30,679 for "all's". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "all's" and "alleys".

  • Full dictionary entry for "all's" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "alleys" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #119,908 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "all's" and "alleys" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "all's vs alls". 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 #119,908 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list