A new form of elemental identification named Isotopic Fine Structure Mass Spectrometry (IFS-MS) is presented here that uses high mass resolving power (>500,000) combined with high magnitude fidelity to directly detect the direct heteroatom signature by identifying discrete isotopologues. This type of measurement is vastly superior to previous methods for determining chemical formulae since the type of heteroatoms and quantity can be directly determined from measured spectra, in essence allowing chemical formulae to be “read” directly off of mass spectra. We present the mechanics and requirements behind this approach along with several applications oriented examples.