personablevspersonalsWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: personable is a adjective, personals is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“personable” is an adjective and “personals” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,332
“personable” frequency rank
#49,547
“personals” frequency rank
91879
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature personable personals
Definition Of a person: having a pleasing appearance; attractive; handsome. plural of personal

Letter map: personable vs personals

Shared letters muted; letters that set personable and personals apart highlighted. Shared run: 8. personable runs 10 letters (CVCCVCVCCV) against personals's 9 (CVCCVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

10 ch
personable
9 ch
personals

Part-of-speech tell for personable / personals

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: personable is anadjective and personalsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 91879, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

personable is recorded at frequency rank #42,332, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈpɜːsn̩əbl/. personals is at rank #49,547, tagged as anoun.

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 91879, this pair ranks #2,999 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of personable vs personals

Shared letters: aelnoprs. Private to "personable": b. Private to "personals": -.

"personable" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCVCCV  ·  "personals" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • personable ← eprsonable · perosnable · perrsonable · persnoable · persoanble · personabble · personabel · personablle
  • personals ← eprsonals · perosnals · perrsonals · persnoals · persoanls · personalls · personalss · personasl

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "personable" and "personals" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "personable" is an adjective and "personals" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "personable" vs "personals" - which ranks higher?
"personable" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,332 in our English list, against #49,547 for "personals". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "personable" and "personals".

  • Full dictionary entry for "personable" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "personals" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #2,999 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "personable" and "personals" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "persona vs personals". 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 #2,999 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list