GreenBkk.com Tech | How to Write like Mark Zuckerberg

How to Write like Mark Zuckerberg

By Chris Gayomali on June 3, 2011

The early candidate for weird Facebook lawsuit of the year took another turn this morning, when representatives for the social network discredited Paul Ceglia's alleged e-mail exchange with Mark Zuckerberg as fake. A sham. A forgery. You get the idea.

As you'll recall, Mr. Ceglia is the wood pellet salesman from upstate New York who claims that half of Zuck's stake in Facebook – you know, just $13.5 billion – actually belongs to him, per an agreement reportedly made back in 2003.

But Facebook brought the hammer down last week, highlighting Mr. Ceglia's history of fraud and calling him some not-so-nice things, like (earmuffs kids) an “inveterate scam artist.”

However, one of the case's more interesting subplots saw Facebook call in a linguistics expert to compare Mr. Ceglia's alleged e-mails with e-mails confirmed to have been written by Zuck himself.

Gerald R. McMenamin, the Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at California State University, Fresno, compared 11 of the alleged excerpts with 35 e-mails written by real Zuckerberg, to discern the subtle tics that make Zuck, well, Zuck.

Here are a few of the findings (see the full document here) which you can use to write like Facebook's billionaire creator yourself!

Apostrophes

A) Questionable Zuckerberg writes:

"doesnt," "parents" (parents'), "sites" (site's = contraction for “site is”), and "sites" (site's = possessive)

B) Real Zuckerberg's contractions and possessives are all used correctly. So there's that.

Suspension Points

A) Questionable Zuckerberg writes:

“. . . I've been tweaking the search engine today,” with spaces in between his suspension points.

B) Real Zuckerberg doesn't space out his suspension points. For example: “So let me know…”

Spelling

A) Questionable Zuckerberg writes these words as follows:

“back end” (two words), “internet” (lower case “I”), and “can not” (two words)

B) Real Zuckerberg writes:

“backend” (one word), “Internet” (capital “i”), and “cannot” (one word)

Syntax: Single-Word Sentence Openers

A) Questionable Zuckerberg opens his sentences with the following:

Further,

Additionally,

Thus,

Again,

First,

Mostly though,

Paul,

B) Real Zuckerberg opens his sentences more casually:

Okay

And

Anyhow,

Also,

But

But regardless

Then

However

Signing Off

A) Questionable Zuckerberg closes his e-mails with “Thanks!”

B) Real Zuckberg, however, also closes his e-mails with “Thanks!”

So there you have it. Now you, too, can mimic Mark Zuckerberg's e-mail writing habits, something like:

"Okay I cannot eat animals unless I kill them myself... Anyhow, the Internet's weird, bro. Thanks!"

Credit: TIME TECHLAND (techland.time.com)

Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)