IJ vs iz, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“IJ” is a name and “iz” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,535
“IJ” frequency rank: #32,457
“iz” frequency rank: 78992
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	IJ	iz
Definition	A lake (formerly a bay) adjoining the city of Amsterdam, Netherlands.	third-person singular simple present indicative of be

Letter map: IJ vs iz

Shared letters muted; letters that set IJ and iz apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. IJ and iz follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for IJ / iz

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: IJ is aname and izaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - j in “IJ” becomes z in “iz”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78992, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

IJ is recorded at frequency rank #46,535, classified as aname, pronounced /eɪ/. iz is at rank #32,457, tagged as averb.

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 78992, this pair ranks #23,217 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of IJ vs iz

Shared letters: i. Private to "IJ": j. Private to "iz": z.

"IJ" · 2 letters · shape VC · "iz" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "IJ" for "iz" ever safe?

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

In ordinary English text, does "IJ" or "iz" show up more?

"iz" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,457 in our English list, against #46,535 for "IJ". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "IJ" and "iz". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "IJ" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "iz" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #23,217 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"IJ" and "iz" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IJ vs ith". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #23,217 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.