usvsUSGSTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#95
“us” frequency rank
#27,015
“USGS” frequency rank
27110
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature us USGS
Definition Me and at least one other person, excluding the person(s) being addressed. (exclusive us.) Initialism of United States Geological Survey.

Letter map: us vs USGS

Shared letters muted; letters that set us and USGS apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
us
4 ch
USGS

Part-of-speech tell for us / USGS

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: us is apronoun and USGSaname. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “us” sits inside “USGS”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27110, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

us is recorded at frequency rank #95, classified as apron, pronounced /əs/. 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 27110, this pair ranks #381,526 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of us vs USGS

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

"us" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "USGS" · 4 letters · shape VCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "us" for "USGS" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "us" is a pronoun and "USGS" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "us" vs "USGS" - which ranks higher?
"us" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #95 in our English list, against #27,015 for "USGS". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "us" and "USGS". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "us" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "USGS" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #381,526 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "us" and "USGS" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "UAS vs USGS". 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 #381,526 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