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Mark Zuckerberg Left A Funny Dedication In A Grammar Book He Gave To A Friend

Aug 7, 2014, 01:58 IST

CEOs sometimes use literature to pass wisdom on to employees. Square CEO Jack Dorsey, for example, gives every person he hires a copy of Atul Gawande's "The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right." It's a book about how a simple checklist can help people manage complex situations.

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Mark Zuckerberg pays close attention to details and likes his products to be perfect. One early employee says Zuckerberg gave him a Hanukkah present one year to make a point that even things like punctuation are critical to the success of a business.

The gift Zuckerberg gave the employee, Noah Kagan, was a famous grammar book by Strunk & White called "Elements of Style."

Kagain writes about the gift and the reasoning behind it in an ebook about Facebook:

There was a common thread weaved throughout the way things were done [at early Facebook]: an unbreakable set of "laws." I still vividly remember these six laws...[One was] Fix it...NOW! Periods and commas are everything! Attention to detail, grammar and ease of use are the most critical things on the site. I even got an early Hanukkah present from Mark, the book Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

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Zuckerberg allegedly gave Kagan, who served as an early product manager for Facebook, the gift with a Star Wars-adopted quote:

"The product is strong with this one. Now learn some grammer [sic]."

Funny enough, Zuckerberg appears to have spelled "grammar" wrong.

Here's a picture of the gift from Kagan's blog, OkDork:


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