Microsoft On L33tSpeak
This is just hillarious. Microsoft has crafted a website for parents to address child safety: “Understand how your kids communicate online to help protect them”. I can just see lil johnny coming home from school and telling mom that he pwns her and she has no ski11Z haha. I’ve included some of the more funny bits below:
Key points for interpreting leetspeek
• Numbers are often used as letters.
The term “leet” could be written as “1337,” with “1″ replacing the
letter L, “3″ posing as a backwards letter E, and “7″ resembling the
letter T. Others include “8″ replacing the letter B, “9″ used as a G,
“0″ (zero) in lieu of O, and so on.• Non-alphabet characters can be used to replace the letters they resemble.
For example, “5″ or even “$” can replace the letter S. Applying this
style, the word “leetspeek” can be written as “133t5p33k” or even
“!337$p34k,” with “4″ replacing the letter A.• Letters can be substituted for other letters that may sound alike.
Using “Z” for a final letter S, and “X” for words ending in the letters
C or K is common. For example, leetspeekers might refer to their
computer “5×1llz” (skills).• Rules of grammar are rarely obeyed.
Some leetspeekers will capitalize every letter except for vowels (LiKe
THiS) and otherwise reject conventional English style and grammar, or
drop vowels from words (such as converting very to “vry”).• Mistakes are often left uncorrected. Common typing misspellings (typos) such as “teh” instead of the are left uncorrected or sometimes adopted to replace the correct spelling.
• Non-alphanumeric characters may be combined to form letters.
For example, using slashes to create “/\/\” can substitute for the
letter M, and two pipes combined with a hyphen to form “|-|” is often
used in place of the letter H. Thus, the word ham could be written as “|-|4/\/\.”• The suffix “0rz” is often appended to words for emphasis or to make them plural. For example, “h4xx0rz,” “sk1llz0rz,” and “pwnz0rz,” are plural or emphasized versions (or both) of hacks, skills, and owns.