Which to use
“important” is an adjective and “importantly” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #347
- “important” frequency rank
- #6,148
- “importantly” frequency rank
- 6495
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | important | importantly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Having relevant and crucial value; having import. | Used to mark a statement as having importance. |
Where the eye mixes important and importantly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 9 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between important and importantly
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: important is /ɪmˈpɔː.tənt/ while importantly is /ɪmˈpɔː.tənt.li/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “important” sits inside “importantly”, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6495, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
important is recorded at frequency rank #347, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɪmˈpɔː.tənt/. importantly is at rank #6,148, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ɪmˈpɔː.tənt.li/.
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 6495, this pair ranks #511,185 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of important vs importantly
Shared letters: aimnoprt. Private to "important": -. Private to "importantly": ly.
"important" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCCVCC · "importantly" · 11 letters · shape VCCVCCVCCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- important ← immportant · imoprtant · imporatnt · imporrtant · importannt · importantt · importatn · importnat
- importantly ← immportantly · imoprtantly · imporatntly · imporrtantly · importanlty · importanntly · importantlly · importantlyy
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "important" and "importantly" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "important" or "importantly" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "important" and "importantly" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "important" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "importantly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #511,185 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "important" and "importantly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "important vs impotent". 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 #511,185 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.