Pick random letters instantly — filter by case, vowels or consonants, and see the NATO phonetic alphabet. One click, no sign-up.
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The random letter generator pulls random letters from the alphabet. You can adjust the number of letters to generate and whether they are uppercase, lowercase, or mixed case. The pool of letters to choose from can be limited to vowels, consonants, or the full A–Z range. Frequency weighting can be toggled on to make the generated letters reflect the true frequency of letters in English. Each letter generates instantly, with no loading, no account required, and no software to download or install.
Word games are by far the most popular use for a letter generator. In games of Scrabble, every turn starts with a player being dealt a rack of seven random letters. To practice unscrambling letters as fast as possible, deal yourself one. Set the count to 7 and turn off 'duplicates' – click to generate a practice rack. For Boggle, generate 16 letters to fill a 4×4 grid. For Wordle, generate 5 random letters as a starting challenge to see if you can make a real 5-letter word from the hand you've been dealt.
By limiting yourself to only consonants or only vowels, you can focus on particular areas of difficulty. Practice unloading vowel-heavy Scrabble racks by generating vowel-only hands and see if you can come up with short saves like AA, AE, OE, or EAU. Similarly, by flipping to a consonants-only list, you can practice finding clusters of consonants like STR, CHR, or PHR until they become so familiar that they leap out at you every time.
Another use case for this tool is choosing the vowels-only or consonants-only filter. Since the alphabet is split into vowels and consonants, this tool helps your children learn. To sound out words, children need to know that every syllable has a vowel. Using the vowels-only filter lets students focus on A, E, I, O, and U while practicing a drill, and the consonants-only filter lets them work with the other 21 letters of the alphabet.
Turn on Show letter number to help students practice reading alphabetized lists. Having the letter and its corresponding number (i.e., E – (5)) helps students understand where each letter is in the alphabet. Children can practice using these letters to look up words in a dictionary as well. You can create a drill where children are shown one letter at a time to make flashcards, or create a sorting activity where children are shown 10 letters at a time.
ESL and EFL teachers can use random letters for a quick warm-up activity. Show one letter to the students and ask them to name an animal, a country, or a food that starts with the letter shown. This activity can be set up in about thirty seconds and encourages many students to talk in class.
Select "Show NATO phonetic" to show the code word for every letter on the letter cards. This alphabet was created to prevent letters from being misheard on a radio, phone, etc. Letters like B & D, M & N, and P & T can sound very similar in certain situations, but you will never mishear "Bravo" for "Delta".
It's already used every day – pilots contacting air traffic control, emergency operators verifying addresses, call center operators reading back booking reference codes, and even spelling out full names of streets when contacting someone over the phone. The phonetic alphabet is more prevalent than you may think.
The only way to get good at using the NATO phonetic alphabet is to use it a lot. Test yourself by generating a letter at random. Say the NATO word for that letter out loud. Check the letter against the word on the relevant letter card. Repeat this process for a few minutes each day. Soon the words will be coming out of your mouth automatically. This is what you want to happen when you need to use the words in a real situation.
Not every letter shows up with the same frequency. E is the runaway winner: it accounts for about 12.7% of all letters in typical English writing. T is next at 9.1%, then A at 8.2%, O at 7.5%, and I at 7.0%. At the other end, Z shows up in only 0.07% of text, Q in 0.10%, and X in 0.15%. That's a huge gap: E is more than 170 times as common as Z. This one fact quietly shapes a surprising number of things you already use, from Scrabble tile scores (Z and Q are worth 10 points because you'll rarely draw them) to how codebreakers cracked ciphers before computers, to the way the Dvorak keyboard was laid out.
Turn on the "Weight by English frequency" toggle to see this play out. Instead of every letter having the same chance of appearing, the generator picks letters at the same rate they show up in real English. Writers use this to create letter prompts that feel like actual words instead of a jumble of Zs and Qs. Wordle players use it to practice leading with the most common letters, which is the fastest way to knock out possibilities early in a puzzle.
Create a prompt by generating three random letters. Write a sentence using each of the letters at the beginning of consecutive words. Even though this seems simple, it is actually quite challenging as it forces you to choose words that are beyond your 'normal' usage. For example, using the letters R, T and W, you might come up with 'Rabbits travel well' or 'Rain transforms winters'. This exercise is particularly good at forcing us out of our usual modes of expression. If you use a bigger prompt to create a scene or story, then use these letters to form sentences between words chosen by the random word generator; it could work very well.