alls vs ASL, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“alls” is a determiner and “ASL” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,608
“alls” frequency rank: #28,821
“ASL” frequency rank: 73429
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	alls	ASL
Definition	All.	Initialism of American Sign Language.

Letter map: alls vs ASL

Shared letters muted; letters that set alls and ASL apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

alls

3 ch

ASL

Grammar separator: alls vs ASL

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alls is adeterminer and ASLaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73429, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alls is recorded at frequency rank #44,608, classified as adet, pronounced /ɔːlz/. ASL is at rank #28,821, tagged as aname.

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 73429, this pair ranks #39,655 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of alls vs ASL

Shared letters: als. Private to "alls": -. Private to "ASL": -.

"alls" · 4 letters · shape VCCC · "ASL" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Known mistypes of this pair

alls ← allss · alsl · lals

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "alls" and "ASL" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alls" is a determiner and "ASL" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary English text, does "alls" or "ASL" show up more?

"ASL" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,821 in our English list, against #44,608 for "alls". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "alls" vs "ASL" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "alls" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ASL" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #39,655 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"alls" and "ASL" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "algo 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 #39,655 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.