Slashy Speak

On online kink forums, I always hear more experienced kinksters groaning about how awful this thing called "slashy speak" is and how much they hate it [insert online groaning here]. This is always followed up by a question from a newer, younger person, "What on earth is slashy speak?"

Slashy speak is typing with slashes to indicate who is the Master/Mistress and who is the slave. An example of it looks like this:

W/we went to pick up O/our children after school so W/we could take them out to
eat ice cream.

Slashy speak extends from the idea that Masters and Mistresses deserve to be written about always using capital letters, while slaves and subs should only refer to themselves in the lowercase.

Not everyone uses slashy speak (in fact most don't), but some Masters and Mistresses do require their slaves to speak about them using only capital letters, and to use lowercase letters when speaking about themselves. The idea behind it is that it helps the slave remember who is in charge and it shows respect to the Master. Of course, that is fairly easy when the sentences look like this:

Every night, She lays down and i give Her a back rub.

Additionally, some Masters and Mistresses require that the slave speak only in 3rd person, making the post look more like this:

Every night, She lays down and this slave gives Her a back rub.

When Masters require their slaves or subs to capitalize references to the Master and keep references to the slave lowercase, it makes words that include both of them (we, our, ourselves, us) difficult to type. Therefore, people use "slashy speak" to differentiate between the two, like so: W/we, O/our, O/ourselves, U/us.

Slashy speak is generally very unpopular in online forums. Although it does not bother me, many people say it is distracting and hard to read. If slaves spend too much of the post in slashy speak, some people just won't read the post because it hurts their eyes. I can totally understand not wanting to decipher an entire post written in slashy speak.

For me, slashy speak isn't an issue because my Dom does not require me to put pronouns referring to him in capital letters. This is good, since that is probably not something I would agree to, anyway, since I use capitalized pronouns only when referring to God, Christ, and other manifestations of God's divine nature.

But for those of you considering slashy speak, remember: it's generally unpopular on online forums, and can be difficult to understand. Keep it to a minimum, or try using it only for private correspondence between you and your Master/Mistress.