pagevsparWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: page is a noun, par is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“page” is a noun and “par” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#850
“page” frequency rank
#28
“par” frequency rank
878
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature page par
Definition Face d’une feuille de papier, de parchemin, de vélin, servant à l’écriture ou à l’impression. Sert à marquer le mouvement et le passage.

Where the eye mixes page and par

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

4 ch
page
3 ch
par

Visual trap between page and par

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: page is \paʒ\ while par is \paʁ\. 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 (noun vs preposition), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 878, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

page is recorded at frequency rank #850, classified as anoun, pronounced \paʒ\. par is at rank #28, tagged as aprep, pronounced \paʁ\.

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 878, this pair ranks #438,967 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of page vs par

Shared letters: ap. Private to "page": eg. Private to "par": r.

"page" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "par" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pageapge · paeg · pagge · pgae · ppage

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "page" and "par" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "page" is a noun and "par" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "page" or "par" show up more?
"par" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28 in our French list, against #850 for "page". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "page" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "par" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #438,967 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "page" and "par" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "par vs pio". 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 #438,967 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