Gamer Speak sometimes referred to as leet speak, was originally forged in the early pc era, and later evolved to gamers need to type fast even if spelling generated errors. Todays leet speak is know to the culture as a whole and is used outside of the culture by people who use instant messaging and send quick emails.

Leet words are expressed in hundreds of ways, using a varying array of substitutions and combinations. Nearly all characters are formed as phonemes and symbols, but any given word can be interpreted in myriad ways. Here are a few general trends:

Key points for interpreting leetspeek

Numbers and symbols replace the letters that they resemble. You could write the term "leetspeak" as "!337$p34k". The character "!" replaces the letter L, "3" replaces E, and so on. Other examples of character/letter replacement might include "8" for B, "9" for G, and the number 0 for the letter O.

Letters can be substituted for other letters that sound alike. For example, you might replace the final letter S in a plural word with the letter Z, making your skills into "skillz". With the letter X replacing the letter C or K, the example becomes "sxillz". Then using numbers and symbols, you might end up with "5x1llz".

Mistakes are left uncorrected. Common typing errors such as "teh" instead of "the" are left uncorrected or deliberately adopted.

The suffix "0rz" might be appended to words for emphasis or to make them plural. For example, "h4xx0rz" or "sk1llz0rz," are plural or emphasized versions (or both) of hacks or skills.

There is a small rebellion in the gamer community of using leet speak because it has ben so widely advertised, it's lost it's usefuleness and has as such become passe.

Here are a few Gamer universals which may live on:

* Warez is a plural shortening of "software"
* W00t is an exclamation of joy
* LOL, meaning “Laughing Out Loud"
* Noob, and derivations thereof, is used extensively. The word means, and derives from, newbie (as in new and inexperienced or uninformed)
* Owned and pwned both refer to the domination of a player in a video game or argument (rather than just a win), or the successful hacking of a website or computer.

A discourse which has never gone away in Gamer speak:
- You got pwned noob.
- STFU, you're gay. *

(*Gay in this context does not describe someone's sexual orientation nor does it mean happy. It is an expression by the user that he is upset that he lost and even more upset that you are rubbing the loss in his face.)