Welcome, readers, to another instructional post from yours truly. Today, you will hopefully master the general guidelines of understanding words on the Internet! From my previous experiences, I have gathered the following notes for you to use.
Presenting...
Presenting...
How to Decode Internet Writing
Your simple and free guide to something you might already know how to do
1.Take a deep breath and hope the piece of text you will be reading is written in standard English.
2. Read through it. I often find that really difficult or strange looking things can be deciphered by reading out loud.
3. If you are lucky, the thing is written in standard English. Then you can just grin and keep on scrolling. However, chances are that you are not that lucky. In this case, you need to stop scrolling and sigh.
4. Next change every "u" into "you."
5. Pick out the words that look like they could possibly be some obscure word. Check if it is a contraction that is missing an apostrophe. If adding an apostrophe makes some sense, go ahead. For example, "cant" becomes "can't" and "wont" usually becomes "won't". (although it could be substituting "want")
6. If you see the word "ill" change it to "I'll." It's unlikely the person actually means "ill."
7. Find the clumps of letters that seem like they could be typos. Most likely they are Internet acronyms. Just search them on Google.
8. If they are not Internet expressions, then they could actually be typos. Read the word out loud slowly and use context clues to guess what it should be.
9. If there are combinations of letters and numbers, there are two possibilities.
3. If you are lucky, the thing is written in standard English. Then you can just grin and keep on scrolling. However, chances are that you are not that lucky. In this case, you need to stop scrolling and sigh.
4. Next change every "u" into "you."
5. Pick out the words that look like they could possibly be some obscure word. Check if it is a contraction that is missing an apostrophe. If adding an apostrophe makes some sense, go ahead. For example, "cant" becomes "can't" and "wont" usually becomes "won't". (although it could be substituting "want")
6. If you see the word "ill" change it to "I'll." It's unlikely the person actually means "ill."
7. Find the clumps of letters that seem like they could be typos. Most likely they are Internet acronyms. Just search them on Google.
8. If they are not Internet expressions, then they could actually be typos. Read the word out loud slowly and use context clues to guess what it should be.
9. If there are combinations of letters and numbers, there are two possibilities.
- If the thing is pretty short, most of the letters' and numbers' names should be said. Basically, something like C U L8R would be "see you later." You have to actually say "cee yu luh-eight-er".
- If the thing is a long chain of stuff, either the person hates the space bar or the numbers stand for letters. (I believe this is called "leet.") Assuming the second fact, I will provide a brief guide.
1= I, 2= Z, 3=E, 4= P, 5= S, 7= T, 8=B, 0= O
You just replace each number with the corresponding letter. Sometimes people will also write
letters using punctuation marks. For example, "w" might be written as "\ /\ /."
10. If you still don't understand it, drive to your local middle or high school and ask that clump of kids screaming and talking and texting. They will gladly help you read it after making fun of you. Of course by now you probably don't care that much....
