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.
(More on TIME.com: Mark Zuckerberg – Person of the Year 2010)
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!”
More on TIME.com:
Viewpoint: Facebook is Not Your Friend
Even Your Friends-Only Facebook Material Can Be Used in Court
