Leetspeak (colloquially known as "leet" and "eleet") is a manipulation of the English language primarily for use on the Internet. Leetspeak uses a variety of ASCII characters to replace letters:

• For example, the word "elite" can be replaced with "1337" where the numbers have a similar appearance to the word "leet" which is short for "elite".

• In another example, the word "hacker" can be replaced with "H4X0R".

It is important to note, however, that leetspeak is usually different from Internet slang (colloquially known as "chatspeak") which normally uses a combination of acronyms and symbols that can be easily understood:

• For example, the phrase "laugh out loud" originated from the acronym "LOL" which is representative of the user laughing.

• In another example, a user may signify that he is happy by using the symbol "=)", which has a similar appearance to a smiley face. Note that the equal sign, "=", is sometimes replaced with a colon, ":", and the parenthesis, ")", may sometimes be replaced with a bracket, "]".