Writing Style

How does type affect writing style?

A casual observation upon reading through this group is that NT's generally seem to adore using parentheses. This made me wonder if personality directly affects writing style.

As an INTJ I strive for brevity and clarity in writing, however I often end up using fairly long sentences with too many commas (and I actively edit out parentheses, so as to not look absolutely ridiculous by having half of what I wrote in them). I also tend to edit and rephrase everything at least twice, more if I have the time. I do this when I speak too, but having more time for it when I write makes me rather ponderous as a writer.

#1 This also describes my writing style to a 'tee' (notice speech marks instead of parentheses to break away from typecasting - but drat! - I find I have now used parentheses to explain the former non use of parentheses).

I think it is because we have too many things going on in our head and to try to put them down in writing we need to break them up into bite size chunks that others can more easily digest.

Tee-hee! Have to laugh because posted a book review today in one of my other groups chock-full of parentheses! Here's to us INTJs!

I'm an NT, but actually an ENTP, so I'm not sure that I use a lot of parentheses. But, I know I speak a lot of parenthetical statements, but in the P sense of avoiding closure. Most of my reviews in LT are fairly short, and probably don't look like the work of an "P".

ISTJ (with a very weak S), and I tend to have long sentences with lots of commas, lol.

I, too, am a ISTJ and also have a tendency toward long sentences. Maybe I have an aversion to using a period so I keep going on and on rather then stopping and starting again. See what I mean.

Ah, how marvelous! Yes, yes, and yes - this is me. I tend to use many dashes, commas, semicolons, and parentheses, always trying to elucidate meaning (especially by qualifying a statement); or, as so wisely said, to separate multiple lines of thought. As far as I can tell, I'm an INFP, with a strong T component, and a somewhat weak I. So how this relates to everyone else, I am not sure. To some degree, I share vpfluke's reluctance to close, and ability to muster occasional compressed brevity.

(This post might as well be comically demonstrative. ;) )

Re:1, editing is a mania with me, and the desire for brevity and clarity one I share, yet often feel I miss.

I am an INFP and I tend to use/overuse connecting punctuation, like colons, semi-colons, and my favorite in college was the dash. I think the INFP always wants to show correlation: this is like that. Also I used to be very long-winded but have worked hard on a clear, simple style that pleases me.