IH vs is, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“IH” is a noun and “is” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,767
“IH” frequency rank: #8
“is” frequency rank: 35775
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	IH	is
Definition	Initialism of industrial hygiene.	third-person singular simple present indicative of be

Letter map: IH vs is

Shared letters muted; letters that set IH and is apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for IH / is

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: IH is anoun and isaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - h in “IH” becomes s in “is”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 35775, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

IH is recorded at frequency rank #35,767, classified as anoun. is is at rank #8, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɪz/.

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 35775, this pair ranks #309,042 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of IH vs is

Shared letters: i. Private to "IH": h. Private to "is": s.

"IH" · 2 letters · shape VC · "is" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "IH" for "is" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "IH" is a noun and "is" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "IH" or "is"?

"is" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8 in our English list, against #35,767 for "IH". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

Full dictionary entry for "IH" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "is" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #309,042 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"IH" and "is" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IH vs ith". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #309,042 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.