intovsitsConfusable pair

Quick tell: into is a preposition, its is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“into” is a preposition and “its” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,921
“into” frequency rank
#15,916
“its” frequency rank
32837
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature into its
Definition Au milieu de, dans, en, parmi, à. Son, sa (lorsque c’est une chose qui possède).

Where the eye mixes into and its

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
into
3 ch
its

Visual trap between into and its

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: into is \ˈɪn.tuː\ while its is \ɪts\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (preposition vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32837, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

into is recorded at frequency rank #16,921, classified as aprep, pronounced \ˈɪn.tuː\. its is at rank #15,916, tagged as adet, pronounced \ɪts\.

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 32837, this pair ranks #294,616 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of into vs its

Shared letters: it. Private to "into": no. Private to "its": s.

"into" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "its" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • intoinnto · inot · intto · itno · nito

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "into" for "its" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "into" is a preposition and "its" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "into" or "its" show up more?
"its" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,916 in our French list, against #16,921 for "into". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "into" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "its" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #294,616 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "into" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "isi vs its". 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 #294,616 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