What Letters Look Like Numbers: A Guide to Leet-Speak

Leet-speak (also known as eleet, hacker speech, or most famously, 1337) is a system made up of a set of spelling conventions developed and used primarily by internet users. Its most basic assumption is substituting the standard English alphabet with numbers, symbols, and other characters based on visual resemblance.

Let's take a look at some specifics of leet speak, what numbers look like letters, and the modern legacy of leet-speak.

In its nature, leet-speak is not based on a fixed, one-to-one correspondence. Instead, it evolves through pure creativity, which makes it highly variable.

There exist multiple "levels" of complexity. At the lowest level, the main question to ask is: "What letters look like numbers?" Within this first tier, we find a set of unambiguous and straightforward swaps, such as:

• A → 4
• E → 3 (often representing a mirrored "E" even outside of leet-speak)
• I → 1
• O → 0
• S → 5
• T → 7
• B → 8
• G → 6 or 9

When seeing monstrosities like 1337, n008, and h4ck3r, you might think that you came across a bug. However, it's not a bug; it's a fundamental social feature that constitutes an integral part of internet culture. While a basic translation of "hacker" might be h4ck3r, a more advanced user might write |-|4><0|2. The more complex and obscure the substitution, the more elite the user signals themselves to be.

Let's take a look at a more comprehensive, though by no means exhaustive, leet-speak substitution matrix to discover how the most elementary substitutions evolve into more advanced ones.

Because leet-speak is a flexible and evolving language, some of the most fascinating leet-speak examples are those that highlight its ambiguity. Let’s take a look together!

The number 2 in leet-speak

What letter does the number 2 look like? The clearest, most direct substitution of the number 2 is the letter Z because of its close visual match. However, depending on who you’re asking, the number 2 is also commonly used to represent the letter S, or even R.

Let’s look at a classic leet-speak example — the word “beginner”. At the most basic level of leet-speak, you would write this word as follows: 8391NN32. As you can see, the number 2 was used to substitute R. It could seem counterintuitive, but these frequent contradictions, by which a single number could stand for multiple letters, are the whole point of this internet lingo: it’s not a cypher, it’s a creative and emergent linguistic game.

Google in leet-speak

The translation of "Google" in leet-speak is one of the best examples, as it clearly illustrates the different levels of advancement.

• Basic leet: The most common translation, and a perfect leet-speak example, is G00g13, where O becomes 0, and E becomes 3.
• Intermediate leet: A more fluent user might write 600613, substituting all characters, as opposed to just a few. At a more advanced level, more complex characters may be used, as we saw in the table earlier. Therefore, the word Google in leet-speak may look completely different after all the substitutions.

However, the most fascinating thing is that the company itself has shown support to the leet-speak community in the past! In the early 2000s, Google introduced an Easter egg version, which displayed the whole page in leet-speak. You can take a look at one of the snapshots using the Wayback Machine! Although this Easter egg has been removed, Google still understands some leet-speak — try searching for “g00gl3 tr4nsl4t3” and you won’t be disappointed.

Many may think that leet-speak is just an advanced version of calculator spelling. Do you remember when in math class, you used to write all sorts of things using a calculator, then flipping it upside down to see the results of your work? That was essentially a side effect of analog calculators, as some numbers resembled letters when flipped upside down. Modern technology has essentially stripped us of that possibility.

Leet-speak, on the other hand, is an intentional linguistic creation that uses not only numbers but also the full ASCII character range. But most importantly, it's read the right side up!

The mainstream adoption of leet-speak began in the world of online gaming, despite its origins often being attributed to the calculator trick. It all started with simple substitutions to create words, such as n00b (a derogatory term for a newbie), which was never meant to be read upside down.

Should I use leet-speak to make my password more secure?

You might think that this gamer language is a great way to create secure passwords, but be very careful! Modern tools are programmed to check for these predictable leet substitutions. To an attacker's software, p4$$w0rd isn't a random string of characters, and it's often cracked within seconds. At the end of the day, the very thing that makes leet-speak so popular is its predictability and ease of use. So the next time you ask yourself what letters look like numbers when creating a password, maybe you should think of a more sophisticated way to keep your data secure.

The question "What numbers look like letters?" opens a door to the heart of digital culture. Leet-speak is a lot more than just a cringy relic of the internet: it's a linguistic artifact that has been developing for over forty years.

It began as a tool for evading automated filters and evolved into a matter of communal identity. Today, its legacy is dangerously split. On the one hand, it remains a strong signal of belonging for the few who still use it; on the other, it poses a danger for anyone who comes across it and thinks it's the perfect way to secure private information. In recent years, however, researchers have also demonstrated that leet-speak can still be used to bypass modern AI firewalls, indicating that its principles remain as relevant today as they were in the 1980s.