# Can you tell if someone is an INTP or an INTJ from their writing?



## uncertain (May 26, 2012)

Can you, and how? Not just writing from the internet but also books and articles.

Also, is it easier for Ni-user to understand INTJ's writing/theory? And Ne-user INTP's?
Or is it just a matter of writing ability and reading ability?

I am reading a Slavoj Zizek and I think he is an INTP. Ne stands out to me when he keeps jumping from one thing to another in his writing, which is extremely annoying, btw. (I am like "Fuck why do you do this to me. I just start to get interested.")


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## Kingdom Crusader (Jan 4, 2012)

I would hazard a guess that someone with Ni & Te in the top half of their functional stack would express themselves in a more streamlined fashion. And would be more exact with an amount (if this applies), whereas I as a Ti & Ne person would prefer to state things in a round about sort of way, or in approximates.


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## braided pain (Jul 6, 2012)

When they're brief, it's hard to tell. When they get wordy, though...

Ti-Ne tends to be highly structured, with one point flowing right into another. Shorter sentences, but more of them. It *plods*, for lack of a better (nicer) term. It focuses the definitions of a thing, rather than the thing itself. Often comes across as nitpicky.

Ni-Te tend to flow, with more pauses and parentheticals; uses more compound sentences and sentence fragments. Circles around, trying to get at the essence of a thing with objective facts. More easily broken down into bullet points. Either includes way too much backstory or leaves out important parts, thinking them obvious.


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## Tainted Streetlight (Jun 13, 2011)

braided pain said:


> Ti-Ne tends to be highly structured, with one point flowing right into another. Shorter sentences, but more of them. It *plods*, for lack of a better (nicer) term. It focuses the definitions of a thing, rather than the thing itself. Often comes across as nitpicky.


Would Thoreau be INTP then? This is sort of how Walden came across.


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## nevermore (Oct 1, 2010)

braided pain said:


> When they're brief, it's hard to tell. When they get wordy, though...
> 
> Ti-Ne tends to be highly structured, with one point flowing right into another. Shorter sentences, but more of them. It *plods*, for lack of a better (nicer) term. It focuses the definitions of a thing, rather than the thing itself. Often comes across as nitpicky.
> 
> Ni-Te tend to flow, with more pauses and parentheticals; uses more compound sentences and sentence fragments. Circles around, trying to get at the essence of a thing with objective facts. More easily broken down into bullet points. Either includes way too much backstory or leaves out important parts, thinking them obvious.


Really? Both sound Ti-Ne to me, for better and for worse. (As an INTP, I'm also a big fan of parentheticals... :wink

I have to admit I like to ramble when I write nonfiction. Strong Ti users tend to worry other people won't get the "finer points" we tend to find so fascinating, but usually they either do (and just don't find it as fascinating as we do), or don't (and don't care).

I don't think we're highly structured when we write though...I think we _can_ be, but it takes practice. It took boot camp with a J mentor to get me to write well in a structured format. Maybe a well-developed INTP would look like this...though you would think a well developed INTP would also realize when enough is enough...


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## braided pain (Jul 6, 2012)

Tainted Streetlight said:


> Would Thoreau be INTP then? This is sort of how Walden came across.


Been a while since I read him, but a quick look says highly probable imo. 



nevermore said:


> Really? Both sound Ti-Ne to me, for better and for worse. (As an INTP, I'm also a big fan of parentheticals... :wink
> 
> I have to admit I like to ramble when I write nonfiction. Strong Ti users tend to worry other people won't get the "finer points" we tend to find so fascinating, but usually they either do (and just don't find it as fascinating as we do), or don't (and don't care).
> 
> I don't think we're highly structured when we write though...I think we _can_ be, but it takes practice. It took boot camp with a J mentor to get me to write well in a structured format. Maybe a well-developed INTP would look like this...though you would think a well developed INTP would also realize when enough is enough...


Heh, there will always be variations and excepts, but compare the longer posts in the venting and advice threads for each. I don't know how to define it any better, but the layout and the way thoughts are ordered is just... _different_.


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## nevermore (Oct 1, 2010)

braided pain said:


> Been a while since I read him, but a quick look says highly probable imo.
> 
> 
> 
> Heh, there will always be variations and excepts, but compare the longer posts in the venting and advice threads for each. I don't know how to define it any better, but the layout and the way thoughts are ordered is just... _different_.


There's definiately a difference. I've just noticed myself doing a lot of the things you mention INTJ's doing. Ti loves its caveats (which is where the parentheses oten come from...they're clarifications, yes maybe nitpicks :wink:, and it's helped along by Ne which loves its asides).


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## TrailMix (Apr 27, 2011)

I have an INTJ friend who tends to write in a very structured, very technical and no-nonsense fashion. I don't have any other examples of INTJ writing, but his writing (I've helped him edit papers and such) tends to be difficult to read because it seems to be choppy and doesn't quite flow very nicely although the grammar is absolutely perfect. He has a big vocabulary, but tends to use words differently than I would (which is hard to explain, but makes sense... I think haha).

As an INTP, I tend to be very nit-picky about which words I use. For me, words like "smart" and "intelligent", "beautiful" and "stunning", and "fragile" and "delicate" all have very different meanings and are inappropriate when attempting to describe the other in some instances. I've found that I like it when my writing can be read naturally and as if someone were speaking it. I've found that one of my friends (either an INTP or INFJ [SURPRISINGLY HARD TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE]) writes a lot like I do; he tends to write both technically and whimsically at the same time.

I think both INTJs and INTPs are very particular about their writing and tend to write in a technical fashion. However, in my experience, the difference is that an INTJ will outright and literally describe something while an INTP would be more likely to throw a parenthesis, additional thought, or describe something using another, related object (Ne interruptions as I decided to call them right now).

That probably made no sense haha.


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

Ti tends to be more long winded and if pressed always ends in solipsism. If an INTJ or ENTJ are defending a point and you can show them evidence that they're wrong or present arguments as to why they're wrong they tend to change their minds faster.

I think Plato's horse story is a pretty good indication of INTPs especially.


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## azdahak (Mar 2, 2013)

Scelerat said:


> Ti tends to be more long winded and if pressed always ends in solipsism. If an INTJ or ENTJ are defending a point and you can show them evidence that they're wrong or present arguments as to why they're wrong they tend to change their minds faster.
> 
> I think Plato's horse story is a pretty good indication of INTPs especially.



The E/INTJs I know are incredibly stubborn about their preexisting opinions. And when you finally logically corner them, they can often spiral off into nit-picking and semantics. Their ego seems to be more tied up with personally being correct and they turn debate into intellectual competition, rather than a truth seeking endeavor. 

The INTPs I know will argue endlessly about definitions or minutiae. I've gotten into hour long arguments with INTPs about mathematics only to find out, when we've hashed it all out, that we were both simultaneously right and wrong because we were arguing from slightly different definitions. We both walk away satisfied, but we just wasted an hour on a topic that could have been resolved with 5 mins on google.


I can always tell INTJs vs INTPs from slide talks. The INTPs put -everything- on them as if they're afraid of leaving out any details, and their presentations are more ramshackle and...absent minded....if you've ever seen a slide-show where the movie doesn't load, or the graphics are screwed up...or something doesn't work...that's an NTP....lol

INTJs slides are usually fairly concise and have a good flow, but they sometimes forget that no one else in the audience knows what the hell they're talking about in detail. It's almost as if they're making the slides for themselves. They often can't seem to dial back the their particular knowledge to communicate more broadly. Their slides are often filled with specialist jargon that really only makes sense to them. 

For instance, my brother, an INTJ, will explain how he installed windows 7.1 service pack 3 on his Asus XYZ300 (or whatever)...to my non-computer savvy parents.


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## Hoff (Apr 29, 2013)

azdahak said:


> For instance, my brother, an INTJ, will explain how he installed windows 7.1 service pack 3 on his Asus XYZ300 (or whatever)...to my non-computer savvy parents.


Woah man I think you mean Windows 8.1 or maybe Windows XP because only XP has a service pack 3 while win7 is only to sp1. I know because I've had a hellova time installing several different windows operating systems and even a couple linux distros on my computers and my friend's hp pavilion dv5118tx laptop.

You see, that laptop is tricky because it's processor doesn't support 64 bit operating systems and the hard drive connects through a SATA cable and my winXP install disc doesn't come with sata drivers and my win7 install disc only has the 64 bit version and he really didnt want vista on it so i installed ubuntu on it which worked pretty well for the most part but it couldn't detect the laptop's internal wifi adapter so I wound up lending him my usb one. In the mean time i downloaded a version of winxp with sata drivers and it seemed to work okay on my stuff but for some reason it would always blue screen when i tried to install it on his hard drive so I went and got the 32 bit version of windows 7 and got it successfully installed so now the laptop's internal wifi is functional again and I can plug my usb wireless adapter into my newly tossed together second computer (a whole other story in itself) and together with my main computer and my friend's laptop we can now have 3-way LAN battles in starcraft and warcraft 3 and aoe2 and whatnot which is really nice because online gaming is very difficult with my satellite internet connection because the ping is always over 600ms not to mention the data limit which I always go over and get slowed down to the point that a dial up connection starts looking enviable except for the freed up bandwidth I get from midnight to 7am so half the time I'm stuck on a night schedule that revolves around the time that my internet becomes _relatively_ fast until my data limit resets.


true story


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## CorrosiveThoughts (Dec 2, 2013)

Hoff said:


> Woah man I think you mean Windows 8.1 or maybe Windows XP because only XP has a service pack 3 while win7 is only to sp1. I know because I've had a hellova time installing several different windows operating systems and even a couple linux distros on my computers and my friend's hp pavilion dv5118tx laptop.
> 
> You see, that laptop is tricky because it's processor doesn't support 64 bit operating systems and the hard drive connects through a SATA cable and my winXP install disc doesn't come with sata drivers and my win7 install disc only has the 64 bit version and he really didnt want vista on it so i installed ubuntu on it which worked pretty well for the most part but it couldn't detect the laptop's internal wifi adapter so I wound up lending him my usb one. In the mean time i downloaded a version of winxp with sata drivers and it seemed to work okay on my stuff but for some reason it would always blue screen when i tried to install it on his hard drive so I went and got the 32 bit version of windows 7 and got it successfully installed so now the laptop's internal wifi is functional again and I can plug my usb wireless adapter into my newly tossed together second computer (a whole other story in itself) and together with my main computer and my friend's laptop we can now have 3-way LAN battles in starcraft and warcraft 3 and aoe2 and whatnot which is really nice because online gaming is very difficult with my satellite internet connection because the ping is always over 600ms not to mention the data limit which I always go over and get slowed down to the point that a dial up connection starts looking enviable except for the freed up bandwidth I get from midnight to 7am so half the time I'm stuck on a night schedule that revolves around the time that my internet becomes _relatively_ fast until my data limit resets.
> 
> ...


Nice work, but you're going about it the wrong way. 

Just download more ram. Delete System32 for better memory management. And finally, overclock your keyboard for faster I/O. Works every time.


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