Net Speak

[franceslievens]

Thanks to this post by simonf mocking his students' net-illiteracy, I have now discovered that the fact I don't understand the reason behind certain net-speech-patterns is not my illiteracy, but my use of an AZERTY-keyboard. When I hit multiple !! I won't end up with 11 in between them. When I hit the button beside the Shift it gives me <OMG* and not zOMG. Yeah, The Urban Dictionary did solve some long lasting mysteries, that were only long lasting, because they weren't that pressing. What do I care that you all go zOMG!!!!!!1111!!!!! on me when you find the best YouTube-vid evah!!!!!111.

*Which in fact I don't get. I get LJ declaring there's a problem with the code, because I opened a tag and didn't close it.

Comments

[comava.livejournal.com]

I always thought ZOMG came from how fun it would sound. (I have a QWERTZ keyboard but I think my exclamation marks, etc are similarly placed to yours.)

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I thought it stood for Zillion OMGs or something.

On an azerty you don't have to hold down the Shift for exclamation marks etc. The numbers otoh require Shift. (So I usualy end up hitting 88888 when I want to do !! on Qwerty keyboards.)

QWERTZ is German standard, right?

[comava.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it is. I had to look it up though because I had no idea what sort of keyboard I had.

If I miss the shift key on my QWERTZ then I get ¨¨¨¨¨¨. If I miss the shift key I get <OMG like you, though.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'd been wondering for a long time what woot means. Now I know:

Stands for We Own the Other Team; an acronym from the world of online shoot 'em up gaming, signifying a victory, or just that your team is kicking ass

w.0.0.t! we win, you suck muther f*****s!

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Aha. I always thought it was this non-significant utterance, like "Squee!!" Or does that mean something other than "Yay!!" as well?

Looking it up I have been correct: "squee" is indeed a sound put into letters.