Russell Smith, who surely must hate the fact he is the sole non-Italian heterosexualist male in Canada who projects a sense of style, covers the “purely literary” cipher known as l33tspeak. He cites his friend James Reid as a source, but did he perhaps forget to cite Wikipedia, too?
| Smith | Wikipedia |
|---|---|
| Consider leetspeak, the code or cipher | Leet (often Eleet, leetspeak, leetspeek, l33t, 31337, or 1337; from “Elite”) is a cipher |
| Leetspeak (which comes from “elite”) | The term “leet” comes from the word “elite.” |
| “Porn” will often be written “pr0n,” “the” will be “teh.” These are mostly just appropriations of common errors. | “pr0n” for pornography […] “teh” for “the” |
| To “own,” for example, which in gaming slang means “to defeat,” will be written “pwn” because the p and the o are side by side on the standard keyboard and are often mistyped. | “pwn” for “own” (to defeat badly, as in a game: “You got pwned”) |
| By the way, a project is under way to transliterate the Bible into leet, at www.christianhacker .org/ html/ NHV.html. | NHV (New Hacker Version) Bible Transliteration by the Christian Hackers’ Association (http://www.christianhacker .org/ html/ NHV.html) |
It’s a thorough, respectful piece arguing that smart people – those who spend all day reading online – are also smart enough to figure out entirely new orthographies. It’s not even clear that an encyclopedia is something you even have to cite, but it might have helped.