us'svsUSGSWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: us's is a contraction, USGS is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“us's” is a contraction and “USGS” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,501
“us's” frequency rank
#27,015
“USGS” frequency rank
67516
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature us's USGS
Definition Contraction of us + is. Initialism of United States Geological Survey.

Letter map: us's vs USGS

Shared letters muted; letters that set us's and USGS apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
us's
4 ch
USGS

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: us's is acontraction and USGSaname. On the page they differ by a single letter - ' in “us's” becomes g in “USGS”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67516, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

us's is recorded at frequency rank #40,501, classified as acontraction, pronounced /ˈʌsɪz/. USGS is at rank #27,015, tagged as aname.

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 67516, this pair ranks #62,976 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of us's vs USGS

Shared letters: su. Private to "us's": -. Private to "USGS": g.

"us's" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "USGS" · 4 letters · shape VCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • USGSsugs · ugss · usggs · usgss · ussg · ussgs

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "us's" and "USGS" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "us's" is a contraction and "USGS" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "us's" or "USGS"?
"USGS" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,015 in our English list, against #40,501 for "us's". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list