hedvsherTell them apart

Quick tell: hed is a noun, her is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hed” is a noun and “her” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,253
“hed” frequency rank
#58
“her” frequency rank
44311
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hed her
Definition The headline of a news story. Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc).

Letter map: hed vs her

Shared letters muted; letters that set hed and her apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
hed
3 ch
her

Part-of-speech tell for hed / her

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hed is anoun and heradeterminer. On the page they differ by a single letter - d in “hed” becomes r in “her”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44311, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hed is recorded at frequency rank #44,253, classified as anoun. her is at rank #58, tagged as adet, pronounced /ˈhɜː/.

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 44311, this pair ranks #231,816 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hed vs her

Shared letters: eh. Private to "hed": d. Private to "her": r.

"hed" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "her" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hed" and "her" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hed" is a noun and "her" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "hed" or "her" show up more?
"her" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #58 in our English list, against #44,253 for "hed". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "hed" vs "her" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "her" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #231,816 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hed" and "her" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hed vs HRW". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #231,816 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