Which to use
“hem” is an intj and “her” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #21,236
- “hem” frequency rank
- #58
- “her” frequency rank
- 21294
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hem | her |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Used to fill in the gap of a pause with a vocalized sound. | Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc). |
Where the eye mixes hem and her
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hem is /hɛm/ while her is /ˈhɜː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - m in “hem” becomes r in “her”, and the parts of speech differ too (intj vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21294, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hem is recorded at frequency rank #21,236, classified as anintj, pronounced /hɛm/. 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 21294, this pair ranks #424,927 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of hem vs her
Shared letters: eh. Private to "hem": m. Private to "her": r.
"hem" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "her" · 3 letters · shape CVC