NB vs now, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“NB” is a phrase and “now” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,908
“NB” frequency rank: #72
“now” frequency rank: 17980
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	NB	now
Definition	Initialism of nota bene; used in written English to introduce something to be noted.	Present; current.

Letter map: NB vs now

Shared letters muted; letters that set NB and now apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

3 ch

now

Grammar separator: NB vs now

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: NB is aphrase and nowanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17980, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

NB is recorded at frequency rank #17,908, classified as aphrase. now is at rank #72, tagged as anadj, pronounced /naʊ/.

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 17980, this pair ranks #447,925 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of NB vs now

Shared letters: n. Private to "NB": b. Private to "now": ow.

"NB" · 2 letters · shape CC · "now" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "NB" and "now" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "NB" is a phrase and "now" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary English text, does "NB" or "now" show up more?

"now" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #72 in our English list, against #17,908 for "NB". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "NB" and "now". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "NB" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "now" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #447,925 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"NB" and "now" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "NB vs NPL". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #447,925 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.