or is a style of obfuscated (cant) Japanese writing popular amongst urban Japanese youth. As the name suggests ( meaning "gal"), this writing system was created by and remains primarily employed by young women. Like the English phenomenon of SMS language, it is most often used for sending cell phone text messages, but while text is used as a form of informal shorthand, a message typed in usually requires more characters and effort than the same message typed in plain Japanese. Since writing in requires extra effort, and due to the perception of confidentiality, sending messages to a peer is seen as a sign of informality or friendship. The origin of this style is unclear but it has been proposed that magazines targeted at teenage girls first made it popular, and the phenomenon started to gain wider attention in media around 2002. The style has been met with increasing criticism, as its use continues to expand. Reported instances of girls using the writing in school work, OLs ("office ladies") adopting the style in the workplace, and being used in karaoke subtitling, are examples of this. Anthropologist Laura Miller has analyzed as an example of gender resistance. Several online guides for exist, as well as one published book: (2004). Formation Like leet, replaces characters with visually similar characters or combinations of characters. The Japanese language consists of traditional characters of Chinese origin, kanji, and two native syllabic scripts called kana: hiragana and katakana. These characters and scripts are altered to form hidden messages. Hiragana consisting of connected strokes are replaced by symbols or Greek letters: for example, may be rendered as the section symbol §. Hiragana consisting of detached elements are replaced by sequences of kana, Western letters, or symbols. For example, may be typed as |ま (vertical bar and hiragana ) or (ま (open parenthesis and ), may be typed as レナ (katakana ), Iナ (capital i, ), or († (open parenthesis, dagger), and may be typed as ナ= (katakana , equals sign) or †こ (dagger, hiragana ). Katakana is frequently replaced by similar-looking kanji, such as for or for , in a reversal of the process that turned man'yōgana into kana. Kana and rōmaji may be mixed freely, even within a word, and Latin letters in rōmaji may be replaced with similar-looking Cyrillic letters, such as replacing N with И (Cyrillic I). Compound kanji are decomposed into left and