Online Communication

Over the years, various online communities have created different ways for communicating online. These include smilies, acronyms and leet/1337 (elite) speak.

Smilies were created as a result of the ambiguity of internet communication. They were designed to replace facial emotions, which are difficult to convey through text over the internet. At first, simple smilies were introduced, such as the happy/sad face, but eventually, more complex ones were made, which graphical images introduced later on. I tend to use smilies when using almost any communication software that uses the internet as I find it helps to get by message across.

Acronyms were made in order to convey phrases that are used often through only using a few characters on the keyboard. I use acronyms a lot in synchronous online conversations. For example, to say I'll be afk (away from keyboard), I might type "brb" (be right back) or "bbl" (be back later). This is useful for those who know what these phrases mean, but can be confusing for the uninitiated.

Leet speak (1337) was developed primarily as a way to bypass filters on the internet that prevented talk of an illegal or deviant nature. For example, exploits (in software) would become "spl01tz". It is still used today for the same purpose and also by gamers who cheat and try to avoid being punished by using non-ASCII characters in their name. Many people use it nowadays as a source of fun on the internet.