chartevsclartéWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“charte” and “clarté” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,811
“charte” frequency rank
#9,796
“clarté” frequency rank
12607
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature charte clarté
Definition Acte écrit public ou privé de l’époque médiévale, fait et passé devant témoins et portant le plus souvent le sceau de son auteur. Lumière, lueur.

Where the eye mixes charte and clarté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. charte and clarté follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
charte
6 ch
clarté

Visual trap between charte and clarté

A purely visual mix-up. charte (\ʃaʁt\) and clarté (\klaʁ.te\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12607, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

charte is recorded at frequency rank #2,811, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃaʁt\. clarté is at rank #9,796, tagged as anoun, pronounced \klaʁ.te\.

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 12607, this pair ranks #404,540 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of charte vs clarté

Shared letters: acrt. Private to "charte": eh. Private to "clarté": .

"charte" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV  ·  "clarté" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • chartecahrte · ccharte · charet · charrte · chartte · chatre · chharte · chrate

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "charte" and "clarté" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ʃaʁt\ versus \klaʁ.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "charte" or "clarté" show up more?
"charte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,811 in our French list, against #9,796 for "clarté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "charte" and "clarté" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "charte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "clarté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #404,540 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "charte" and "clarté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Carle vs clarté". 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 #404,540 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list