AEIOU

No, it's not a French word, nor a new acronym,, nor a receipt for a debt from an account executive. It's just the list of vowels in the English language. Words in English require a vowel, but our language's exceptions usually outweigh the rules. So, the letter "y" is added as a substitute vowel. Myriad words fall into this category, sky, try, my, fly, but one of the more interesting, larger AEIOU-less words is glyph.

A glyph is a character or symbol. Ancient ideographs compose early written languages i.e. Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan pictoglyphs. While less precise than an alphabet, glyphs' artistic interpretations gave creativity and flexibility to early written language. In today's world, computer icons are just modern glyphs. If pictures are worth a thousand words, then glyphs speak volumes. The problem is fitting them into a keyboard.

One last bit of vowel-less trivia is the 1950's basketball star from Temple University, the "Owl without a Vowel" - Bill Mlkvy. Mlkvy also played one season in the NBA with the Philadelphia Warriors.- as ever BB