Leet speak is also used by computer hackers to communicate with one another. No idea why, it's not that difficult to read...
And you thought text slang was hard to read...
- Thread starter Biker
- Start date
Leet speak is also used by computer hackers to communicate with one another. No idea why, it's not that difficult to read...
Crackers and Script kiddys for sure, never hackers, they don't need to pretend
Crackers and Script kiddys for sure, never hackers, they don't need to pretend
It was used a lot as you said, back in the 80's, particularly on Usenet. The idea was that the language would be scrambled so that scripts and search engines could not detect keywords, so certain things could be communicated without being scanned and either blocked or detected. As a "human" code, it's pretty poor, because you can read it easily, but it's much harder for a script to decipher - or it was back then. ROT13 was another one, but again, a very simple code to break. Then pretty good privacy came out as freeware, a really solid key-based, on-the-fly encryption system that was "government proof" and leet speak was no more. The US gov tried to ban PGP, they tried to prosecute the developer and stop it's distribution, but once it had gone wild and started to pop up on Russian and Chinese servers, they were on a loser. Any real hacker used PGP and leet speak was left to the kids.
The interesting thing about Bikers paragraph at the beginning, is what it tells us about how our brains work. We dont actually read every letter, we scan for visual patterns. Reading is all about recognising visual shapes of words, rather than deciphering an assembly of characters and spaces. Even if the actual characters and spaces are wrong, providing they trigger the right visual cues, providing the shapes of words look close enough, then we can read it.
Airdoccng to a rsrechecah at Cadmrbige Ustvieriny, it deson't matetr in waht oedrr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny iemorptnt tinhg is that the fsrit and last letter msut be at the rgiht palce. The rest can be a ttoal mses and you can siltl read it wtuhoit ploberm. Tihs is bseauce the hmuan mnid does not read evrey letetr by itlsef, but the word as a wlhoe.
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It is. I've spent quite a bit of time reading on hackers 'secret' forums and as a result I read Aaron's original post without really thinking about it.
Don't panic, I'm not into hacking, quite the reverse.
Should that be l33t, not leet?.
As Martyn said - The human brain is tuned to read the shape of words more than individually letters - this is how we can skim read and fast readers can occasionally "guess" incorrectly. All that is happening here is we're replacing one "font" for another - once the brain is attuned to the "shapes" of the word then it finds it much simpler to read. This is why when designing websites we constantly advise people to not use ALL CAPITALS FOR THINGS, especially BUTTONS. Using ALL CAPITALS FOR THINGS ruins the "shapes" of the words and forces the brain to work hard when reading them rendering the experience more stressful/difficult/awkward.
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There was an interesting review article about road signs somewhere recently, I'll try to dig out a reference. Same issues. Anyone who drives in the UK and in Europe will know exactly what I mean when I say how much easier it is to find your way around using the road signs in England than it is practically anywhere on the continent. There's even a 'transport font':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface)
Thing is any of these versions are only easy to read because the brain has been primed with accepted normal forms, grammar and spelling. It is not an argument for anything goes in school. Speech, writing and grammar should still be corrected.
Of course. I don't have an issue with leet speak on the internet, it's only really used by children, but I do loathe txt speak. It is useful as a shorthand when actually using a mobile phone, but it's profoundly lazy on internet forums where a full qwerty keyboard is available to the user. I wonder if they know how ignorant it makes them appear, or if they do but just don't care?
Speech, writing and grammar should still be corrected....in school by a teacher which was the meaning impliedSpeech, writing and grammar should still be correct.
