Which to use
“Person” is a name and “personal” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #22,029
- “Person” frequency rank
- #28,289
- “personal” frequency rank
- 50318
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Person | personal |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Nom de famille. | Personnel, personnelle. |
Where the eye mixes Person and personal
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. Person runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against personal's 8 (CVCCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Why the eye confuses Person with personal
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Person is \pɛʁ.sɔ̃\ while personal is \pɛʁzoˈnaːl\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “Person” sits inside “personal”, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50318, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
Person is recorded at frequency rank #22,029, classified as aname, pronounced \pɛʁ.sɔ̃\. personal is at rank #28,289, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɛʁzoˈnaːl\.
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 50318, this pair ranks #163,595 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of Person vs personal
Shared letters: enoprs. Private to "Person": -. Private to "personal": al.
"Person" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "personal" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "Person" for "personal" ever safe?
Which is more common, "Person" or "personal"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "Person" and "personal" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "Person" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "personal" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #163,595 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "Person" and "personal" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pernod vs Person". 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 #163,595 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.