Disemvowel Tool

Removing vowels

The tool removes a, e, i, o and u, in capitals and small letters, including accented vowels such as é, ü and å. Consonants, digits, punctuation and line breaks are kept. When a one-letter word such as “a” disappears, the double space it leaves is closed up, so the text stays tidy. Vowels of other alphabets, such as Greek or Cyrillic, aren't removed.

Keeping first letters and y

Keep a vowel that starts a word leaves an initial vowel in place, which keeps text much easier to read: “apple” becomes “appl” instead of “ppl”, and “every” becomes “vry” only when the option is off.

Treat y as a vowel removes y as well. In English, y works as a vowel in “rhythm” and “happy” but as a consonant in “yes”; the tool can't tell the difference, so it's all or nothing.

What disemvoweling is

Disemvoweling became known as a moderation technique on blogs and forums in the early 2000s. Instead of deleting a rude or off-topic comment, a moderator removed its vowels: the comment stayed visible, but reading it took deliberate effort, which took the sting out of it. The word itself is a pun on “disembowel”.

Uses: puzzles, abbreviations, moderation

• Word puzzles: readers guess a phrase from its consonants. Tick Remove spaces too to make it harder (“Dsmvwlngmkstxthrdtrd.”).
• Abbreviations: consonant skeletons are the basis of short forms such as “txt”, “msg” or database column names like cstmr_nm.
• Moderation: the original use described above.

Many writing systems, such as Hebrew and Arabic, are normally written without most vowels, and fluent readers manage fine because context fills the gaps.