Which to use
“people” is a noun and “people's” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #10,729
- “people” frequency rank
- #48,581
- “people's” frequency rank
- 59310
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | people | people's |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Personas. | Se considera que pertenece a, o está en sintonía con la gente común, en lugar de pertenecer a una élite gobernante. |
Where the eye mixes people and people's
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. people runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against people's's 7 (CVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: people vs people's
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: people is /ˈpiː.pəl/ while people's is /ˈpiː.pəlz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “people” sits inside “people's”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59310, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
people is recorded at frequency rank #10,729, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpiː.pəl/. people's is at rank #48,581, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈpiː.pəlz/.
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 59310, this pair ranks #63,106 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of people vs people's
Shared letters: elop. Private to "people": -. Private to "people's": s.
"people" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV · "people's" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- people ← epople · peolpe · peopel · peoplle · peopple · pepole · poeple · ppeople
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "people" for "people's" ever safe?
In ordinary Spanish text, does "people" or "people's" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "people" and "people's" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "people" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "people's" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #63,106 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "people" and "people's" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pele vs people". 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 #63,106 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.