Speak Internet-ese

Posted by Linda Roeder May 21, 2007

Internet slang has been around as long as there have been a way to chat, and that's a long time. I remember many years ago, when I first started on the Net, having to learn some of the most common Internet slang. I participated in message board and chat rooms a lot back then. I even hosted a few.

Social networking sites, and blogs as we know them, weren't around yet. There were personal Web sites, but if you wanted to meet people, that's not where you did it. You want to the message boards and the chat rooms. First you chose a site about something you were interested and then you joined their chat rooms and chatted with other people with the same interests.

Even back then people were using Internet slang to save time while they were typing. Chat room windows were often small, so if you wanted to fit everything in, and not have the chat move so fast you can't read it all, then you used Internet slang to shorten the reading time.

Internet slang makes swearing at people fun. It's also very useful when trying to add a tone to your voice or an emotion to your sentences. There are a lot of Internet slang terms, more are created all the time. Some are specific only to chat, or forums, or email, or text messaging. Some can be used in any Internet medium. Learn your Internet slang so you'll look more intelligent next time you chat.