écritvsétroitWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#500
“écrit” frequency rank
#9,421
“étroit” frequency rank
9921
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature écrit étroit
Definition Recouvert de signes graphiques, se dit spécialement d’un papier, d’un parchemin, etc., sur lequel on a écrit ; antonymes : blanc, vierge. De petite largeur.

Where the eye mixes écrit and étroit

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. écrit runs 5 letters (VCCVC) against étroit's 6 (VCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
écrit
6 ch
étroit

Visual trap between écrit and étroit

A purely visual mix-up. écrit (\e.kʁi\) and étroit (\e.tʁwa\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9921, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

écrit is recorded at frequency rank #500, classified as anadj, pronounced \e.kʁi\. étroit is at rank #9,421, tagged as anadj, pronounced \e.tʁwa\.

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 9921, this pair ranks #414,922 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of écrit vs étroit

Shared letters: irté. Private to "écrit": c. Private to "étroit": o.

"écrit" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "étroit" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "écrit" and "étroit" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\e.kʁi\ versus \e.tʁwa\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "écrit" vs "étroit" - which ranks higher?
"écrit" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #500 in our French list, against #9,421 for "étroit". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "écrit" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "étroit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #414,922 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "écrit" and "étroit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "écrit vs émit". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #414,922 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