Önder Aytaç Twitter It's often said that responding to a text or a tweet with a certain single letter — "k" — means you're angry, or mad, or annoyed.

But while a "k" amongst millennials in the United States can spark a miscommunication between lovers or friends, it can actually put you in prison in Turkey.

Just ask Önder Aytaç, a Turkish columnist for opposition newspaper Taraf.

Aytaç was sentenced to 10 months in prison Monday for 'insulting public officials' after a tweet he wrote about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan contained a typo.

This story was initially reported by Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, in a Medium Post entitled "Forget 140 characters: Here’s How to Go to Jail for 10 Months for One ‘k’".

Here's the tweet from September 2012, responding to the news that Erdogan was planning to shut down private schools:





In Turkish, the word "ustam" means "my chief" or "my master," but Tufekci explains that the letter "K" tacked onto the end of that word changes the meaning significantly.

Now that portion of the message turns into the more profane version of "screw off" (use your imagination.)

Turkey has strict defamation laws that prohibit insulting public officials, so tweeting "screw off," even though Aytaç claims it was a typo, puts the journalist on the naughty list.

In March, Erdogan pledged to "wipe out" Twitter and temporarily banned access to the site.

You can read Tufekci's full story on this issue in her Medium post.