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How To Write Like Mark Zuckerberg
newguy77 found a story talking about the results of a linguistics expert being brought in on the Facebook ownership case. They claim the emails are faked since Zuckerberg uses apostrophes correctly and opens sentences more casually than the damning emails.
So all those years of being a grammar nazi can result in actual gainful employment? Who knew?
Also:
They claim the emails are faked since he uses Apostrophes correctly
But did he use Capitalization correctly?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Zuckerburg's writing style of 2003 needs to be compared with emails of that era, not today. Furthermore, he could have been off on some random day in 2003 because he had a cold and wasn't thinking. This just isn't that reliable of method of determining authorship.
It is a reliable method of creating doubt though. Once he has doubt on his side, the case becomes a lot more difficult for his opponent.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
According to the actual court document: " KNOWN writings used for comparison were various email writings of Mr. Zuckerbergexchanged with the Plaintiff and related parties during the time period as specified in the Amended Complaint, which totaled 35 emails
The basic difference between the two is how they manage harvested data.
So, you come to Google, "I have this gizmo for sale, help me sell it." and Google goes "Fine, we found 2000 customers who purchased your gizmo, ship the gizmos here and here (or let us handle it), and here's your money, after we took our cut."
So, you come to Facebook, "I have this gizmo for sale, help me sell it." and Facebook goes "Fine, pay us our cut and here's your 20000000 records of our users data, emails, phones, home addresses, we guess at least 2000 of them are bound to be willing to buy your gizmo if you market it to them."
It's definite oversimplification but it seems your data is much safer with Google than with Facebook.
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Off-topic and pointless maybe, but I use them a lot in my own writing. I remember a handful of esoteric grammatical tips from way back in high school that I've found really help out with bringing the context of conversation to the written word. I'm no grammar god, but it's disappointing to see how much knowledge of the intricacies of our written language is being lost in the era of LOLs and ZOMGs. I'm a casual reader of the classics, and it's amazing how pervasive beautiful writing was even at the lowest tiers of education; e.g. Civil War-era letters from soldiers to their loved ones (lol).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I will admit, in general, it shouldn't change with all those points in just a few years
The whole point is that the linguistics experts compared the alleged fake emails to proven-real emails _from the same time_, not to his current ones.
Atleast I find it very much unlikely that Zuckerberg would've somehow unlearned how to use apostrophes, capitalization and ellipsis correctly every time he contacted the other person, but again picked up on the correct grammar every time he was communicating with other people.