Yarn Diary
US vs UK crochet terms
Last updated 15 August 2026US and UK patterns use the same words for different stitches. A UK double crochet is a US single crochet; a UK treble is a US double. Follow a pattern in the wrong system and every stitch comes out one step too tall. This page has the full chart, a quick converter, and the tells that reveal which system an unlabelled pattern uses.
Quick converter
The conversion chart
The offset is systematic: for the same physical stitch, the UK name is always one step "taller" than the US name. Once you see the pattern, the whole table follows.
| US term | UK term |
|---|---|
| sl st slip stitch | ss slip stitch |
| sc single crochet | dc double crochet |
| hdc half double crochet | htr half treble |
| dc double crochet | tr treble |
| tr treble (also called triple) | dtr double treble |
| dtr double treble | trtr triple treble |
| gauge | tension |
| sk skip | miss |
| yo yarn over | yoh yarn over hook |
Compound stitches shift the same way: a US sc2tog is a UK dc2tog, a US FPdc (front post double) is a UK FPtr, and so on — convert the base stitch and the rest of the name follows. The stitch guide lists every stitch under both names.
Terms that don't change
Chain (ch) is the same stitch with the same name in both systems, and slip stitch changes only its abbreviation (sl st vs ss). The amigurumi vocabulary is shared too: magic ring, increase (inc), decrease (dec), front and back loop only (FLO/BLO) mean the same thing wherever the pattern was written.
How to tell which system a pattern uses
Designers usually say so in the pattern notes — check there first. When they don't:
- "sc" anywhere means US. Single crochet exists only in US terminology; it is the one decisive tell.
- "htr" means UK — the half treble has no US name of its own (US says hdc).
- "tension" and "miss" lean UK; "gauge" and "skip" lean US.
- Spelling helps: colour, grey and fibre suggest a UK or Commonwealth designer, and usually UK terms.
- Hook sizes are a weak signal: letter sizes (H-8, I-9) are American, but designers everywhere give millimetres now, so absence of letters proves little.
A trap worth knowing: a pattern using only dc and ch is genuinely ambiguous — that dc is a different stitch in each system. That is when the other tells earn their keep.
Yarn Diary handles this for you
When you scan or paste a pattern into Yarn Diary, it is parsed in your project's terminology system — US or UK, your choice, shown on the review screen — and one tap flips the entire pattern to the other system and re-checks every round. A pattern read in the wrong system makes itself known: stitches that only exist in the other vocabulary (a UK pattern's htr read as US, say) are flagged as unrecognised instead of silently swallowed, which is your cue to flip.