Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Writing Blogs -> Building Rapport

Legal Writing

: Building Rapport

Have you been puzzled by the garbled words that appear in some conversations on the Internet--especially on photo captions? Me, too. Well, today I came across an explanation.

Since you must be into the use of language--your are reading this blog--learn about the relatively new language LEET, or l33t.

Here is a short explanation from "Silly Internet Traditions: A Concise History":

"Leet" is essentially a form of Internet slang that has been developed haphazardly over the years by both the hacking and online gaming communities. Short for "elite," Leet has slowly migrated over the past 13 years from small hacker groups to mainstream Internet language (see also: LOLCats). While the language's intentional misspellings and grammatical idiosyncrasies are too numerous to list in this space, here are some general rules to remember when trying decipher Leet messages: first, most vowels (a, e, i, and o) are changed into corresponding numbers (4, 3, 1, 0). Second, the suffix "-xor" is often used to replace the suffix "-er" - thus, the word "hacker" is frequently translated into "haxxor" or "h4xx0r."

And some detail at the BBC, An Explanation of l33t Speak.

Full post as published by Building Rapport on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).