One side effect not discussed here: how the shift to ballpoint pens increased hand strain [0]. Writing with a fountain pen is relatively effortless - not to deny it has several other drawbacks. I imagine this is part of why, as an elementary school student in France, I was required to write with only fountain pens.
On the other hand, using a fountain pen is incredibly frustrating and exhausting for left-handed people (in a left to right writing system). I had to unnaturally bend my hand above the line I wanted to write so I don't immediately smear the ink. Basically mimiking a right-hand draw position with the left hand while having your hand above the line instead of on the same level. It hurts.
We were also forced to use it in German elementary school and I remember very well that my dad went to the dean (successfully) demanding that I am allowed to write with something else and abandon cursive training. Thanks again dad!
I remember a left-handed teaching assistant with extremely consistent/neat handwriting; she solved this problem by rotating the page 90deg counter-clockwise, writing 'bottom-to-top' rather than left-to-right, and 'down' the page to the right.
I've never seen anyone else do that, but it certainly worked. Though I remember wondering why not rotate it the other way, so 'down' becomes left and hand wouldn't pass over the previous line either.
I have actually read that turning it 90° clockwise and pushing towards your body is a known method of left handed writers, though it was (unfortunately) never taught to me. It makes sense as it eliminates all the smearing problems. Your left hand moves away from the written letters and lines exactly as you write them. Like it happens naturally for a right handed person writing "normally".
However, I guess the problem is that it basically means you have to learn writing the letters in a completely different way and most 6 year olds will not be able to come up with that themselves.
Edit:
> Left-to-right alphabets can be written smudge-free and in proper "forward slant" with the left hand if the paper is turned 1⁄4 turn clockwise (90 degrees to the right), and the left hand is drawn toward the body on forward strokes, and left to right on upward strokes (as expressed in directionality of the text). It is also possible to do calligraphy in this posture with the left hand, but using right-handed pen nibs.
Funny, that unlocked a memory for me. I distinctly remember my middle school crush writing with the page pretty much sideways, top to bottom, like you describe. Now it makes sense why!
Ball-point pens are fairly useless too, When you're a lefty uou push the pen rather than dragging it so it clogs up. Gel-ink pens has made my life so much better.
Now I finally realise why left-handed people were so often forcibly re-taught to be right-handed in school in 20th century. It always seemed so pointlessly cruel! But with only fountain pens available, it must have been the only choice.
Edit: this also makes me wonder how the hell Ben Yehuda revived Hebrew without ballpoint pens.
As a right-handed person imagining writing left handed, I think the minimal inconvenience of learning to write with the other hand sounds like it far outweighs a lifetime of smeared ink. I don't think it would cause me too much inconvenience to switch hands and I would hardly call it cruel.
>I don't think it would cause me too much inconvenience to switch hands and I would hardly call it cruel.
As a left handed person, I'd recommend you give it a go for a few months, I think you'll find it a good bit harder than you might think - although you're probably not handwriting pages of text all day anymore, so whether it's a fair comparison I don't know.
I certainly found it quite tortuous to be forced to do things with my less (forgive the pun) dextrous hand: it takes constant conscious effort, like a wasteful background process. And that's not to mention the psychological effect of, as a child, being scolded because the most comfortable & natural way of doing something is "wrong".
Thinking abstractly, it doesn't seem to be cruel indeed. But I'm not left-handed, and people I know that are and have experienced it have called it such; I'm not sure whether it's the practice itself or just the common everyday teacher cruelty, but having experienced the latter myself, I wouldn't want to have one more reason to be otherfied by them.
I would kindly ask you to not hold such an opinion on a topic you clearly say you have no experience of. Your argument is akin to asking homosexuals "just not be gay". You don't switch your dominant hand merely by attempting to use the other one; at best that makes you roughly ambidextrous.
Right-handed Arabic writers have very much the same problems as left-handed latin writers. That Arabic is written left to right seems to come from chisel based writing.
> Although it is hard to pinpoint why Arabic is sinistroverse, it has been theorized that before the papermaking process emerged in China, the Arabs used chisels to engrave the ideas and concepts they wished to manifest on stones. Due to its longevity, stone was preferred over leaves, skin, bones and shells. Considering most of the “writers” [and individuals in general] were right-handed, they would use their right hand to hold [and carve with] the chisel and the left hand to hold a hammer. Such direction is more natural because it involves an outward motion and is, therefore, easier to perform from a motor point of view. A left-to-right motion would have been counterintuitive, especially with the risk of personal injury involved.[1]
However, as another comment mentioned there are techniques that solve the smearing and awkward hand-position by rotating the paper. I would not be surprised if those are taught more widely for Arabic as 90% instead of 10% of writers face that problem.
The writing direction in Arabic, Hebrew and other Semitic writing systems has been inherited from the Egyptian.
So any hypothesis about the origin of the right-to-left direction must discuss only how the tools were used for the Egyptian hieratic (written with brushes) and hieroglyphic (carved with chisels) writing systems.
Maybe it was easier to carve hieroglyphs in that direction, but I am not aware of anyone testing this hypothesis in practice.
You two are right. Reading it again I think I corrected the mixed up hands in my head. While they say the chisel is in the right and the hammer in the left, everything else depicted paints the opposite picture in my head.
If you hold the hammer in the right and the chisel in the left, you swing the hammer from the right to the left with the chisel tilted to the right. Thus the natural writing direction (outward from the swing) would be right to left. Swinging your hammer from the right and moving to the left would mean writing in the opposite direction of the force used to write single letters.
So, if the hammer is in the right hand and chisel in the left means a right-to-left motion and makes a left-to-right motion counterintuitive.
I would think that the "fine motor control" would be in holding the chisel, not the hammer. But you find the same pattern for violin or guitar -- "right-handed" playing has the right hand holding the bow or strumming, while the left hand does the fingerings. The fingering is absolutely more difficult; but I think (from my own experience) the main thing is which hand is in control: The bow and the strumming causes the sound to come out, so that's what the right hand wants to do. That's how I feel about using a chisel too.
You need to put chisel in a right place, than strike it with a hammer. So once the chisel is in place, the only thing the left hand does is holding chisel, which is not hard at all.
Think of it as a nail: if you need to hammer in a nail in exactly the right place, you put the nail into exact position holding it with a left hand, then strike it with force using hammer in the right hand. And if you ever did this you know that the tricky part is hitting the nail the right way, so you don't bend it.
It will write smooth dark lines just the right thicknes without blobbing or cutting out, and is the most effortless pen to write with.
But yes, it does write at a higher angle than a fountain pen. I had a fountain pen years and years ago, and it was something you had to want to use. I can't help but think of it like vinyl records, straight razors and film cameras.
I am currently on the lookout for new pen to make my standard usage pen.
My prime requirement is that it should be 1.0mm, or at a minimal 0.7mm, since I love the thickness. Secondary requirement is that it should be smooth.
I bought Baoke gel from Amazon and while I loved it a lot, was greatly disappointed to find it was of Chinese make.
Am now searching for something that’s of non-Chinese origin. So far, I have zeroed in on Uni-ball impact 1.0mm gel pen, and am shortlisting their 0.7mm gel pens as well. I would also give uni-ball 1.0mm and 0.7mm ballpoint pens a try as well in case I feel gel pens get used up faster, since always carrying a backup refill can be an inconvenience.Also, TCO with gel pens is always more than ballpoint pens.
I really like the Pilot G2 pens - they use a nice flowing ink and are available in larger 1.0mm and 0.7mm sizes. They are also pretty easy to find (Amazon has them, I'm sure other stores would as well), so you shouldn't have troubles picking a pack up!
My go to pen for years has been the Sarasa Zebra 1.0. I liked it so much and was frustrated when office supply stores didn't carry it that I bought a carton from a distributor (288 pens!) I doubt I'll run out, but they do dry out eventually.
I face the same crunch in the local market, so maybe I have to resort to the same. It would be great if the refills were in supply as well, and not just pens. I don’t see refills available for all Uni-ball pens available on Amazon.
>>simple humidor? Or solvent-idor?
Does it imply we make our own ink? Did not follow. Kindly elucidate.
The drying out is a function of the volatiles in the ink evaporating. In the ideal case it creates a "crust" on the end of the pen nib which then seals the ink cartridge, but in practice air still gets in.
When you first open these pins they have a small ball stuck on the end of them to prevent the pen from drying out on the shelf. If you could create a case that maintained an atmosphere that prevented evaporation of the volatiles it would keep the pen from drying out.
A 'humidor' keeps cigars from drying out by using a moisture adsorber to keep humidity levels relatively constant in the box. So same principle but applied to pens.
I have a Tombow Zoom[0] and I liked it so much I bought another, so now I have two. It's 0.5mm but it's a very bold line, especially on smooth paper like a Rhodia pad. It appears you can get 0.7mm cartridges for it too.
They are super classy and IMO great value for money. However they do have one problem, which may or may not affect you. The cap doesn't like to stay put on the back of the pen during robust use, e.g. sketching. This happens more with the silver model than with the black model for some reason.
For me it wasn't a show stopper, it just means I use different pens for bar sketching or, if I really want/need to use the Tombow, I remember to pocket the cap before I get going.
I'm also a big fan of the Energel though, just today I was marveling at how thin and precise its 0.5mm line is.
If you're into the Uni-Ball look I recommend trying the Eye, which you can get in Fine or Micro or Needle. I guess in the US it's called the Vision?[1] Might be too thin for you and the aesthetics aren't for everyone but the Micro is my go-to sketching-and-writing pen for when I'm out and about and might lose it. Works much better than the Tombow on toothy papers, like proper artist's drawing paper. They fit very nicely into many spiral bindings too.
You may like the Bic Velocity. They are offered in medium 1.0 and, my favorite, bold 1.6mm. Very smooth and probably my favorite writing instrument. Everyone I have ever turned on to these pens have become fans. I prefer the blue ink but the black is just as smooth. Oh, and not of Chinese origin.
Oh, it is. It can get a little clump of ink on the ball from time to time but that is a small annoyance in relation to the excellent writing feel and quality. It lays down a lot of ink.
I personally try to avoid things manufactured in China due to ethical objections [0]. I don't expect everyone to do so, but I think it's the right thing to do, where possible.
I understand how you could feel compelled to take action against the perpetrators of forced labor camps. Slavery is abhorrent.
I am with you in wanting to contribute to ending slavery, and other race based methods of oppression. Certainly I do not want my consumer dollars to support oppression.
With respect to the subject of this article, is a China pen boycott an effective way to protest treatment of the Uyghurs?
The Forbes article you link to says "According to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, China’s been accused of forcing Uyghur Muslims to work at factories that produce goods for well-known global companies including Apple, Nike, BMW, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen."
Shouldn't we be boycotting those companies which knowingly benefit from the oppression? I imagine you would say yes, and practice such a boycott, aided by some investigation of which companies are knowing beneficiaries.
How about the Australian government, currently run by the party in power that is supported by the "think tank" that is the source of your Forbes article's information about the Uyghurs?
Australia was one of only two nations to vote against a Jordanian draft resolution designed to hasten a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Palestinians suffer a different but equally dismal fate to Uyghurs. They lose the right to earn an income when Israeli soldiers destroy olive farms that have been in their families for generations, and lack alternative employment because the Israeli occupiers deny them freedom of movement and freedom of importation of goods required for industry.
Thank you for your understanding. I am glad we can talk about a mass produced consumer product in the full context of the social relations of its manufacture.
No, the name was certainly not a giveaway, at least to me. Looking at the pictures on the catalog [0] I thought it was Japanese.
Later on when the product arrived, I wished to check if I could order refills in bulk from their website. Upon visiting their website, realization dawned upon me that it’s Chinese.
And in my perspective, it’s unfair to compare Baoke to Huawei. The latter is in the news since months now, and has become synonymous with nefarious snooping activities of the Chinese, in stark contrast to the former which is a pen maker.
> it’s unfair to compare Baoke to Huawei. The latter is in the news since months now, and has become synonymous with nefarious snooping activities of the Chinese
Sure, Huawei has been in the news for months. But Baoke is still a company whose name is in Chinese. We're not talking "Tencent" here.
Then again, if you were able to recognize whether a word was or wasn't Chinese, it's possible you'd feel differently about the moral taint of interacting with Chinese people.
Your last sentence is a classic diversion tactic. It's obvious that GP doesn't have a problem with Chinese persons, but with the Chinese government and regime. That's like when people criticise Putin and someone replies "oh so you hate Russian people?"
From here onwards I am going to use "CCP", so that there's no scope for confusion about being acrimonious towards the Chinese people or their glorious culture.
It's a great civilization, rich in its heritage, but Mao has made things go south.
> It's obvious that GP doesn't have a problem with Chinese persons, but with the Chinese government and regime.
Not really; the boycott of Chinese goods is very much targeted at Chinese people and not so much the Chinese government.
Note that godelmachine hasn't made a criticism of the CCP at all; he's criticizing a pen company for being Chinese. On the assumption that that's not really what godelmachine thinks is wrong with Baoke, how would they respond to make him feel better about interacting with them?
>>But Baoke is still a company whose name is in Chinese.
Does not mean every non-Chinese person should recognize it's a Chinese word. What's your point?
>>if you were able to recognize whether a word was or wasn't Chinese, it's possible you'd feel differently about the moral taint of interacting with Chinese people.
Considering the misery they have caused to the world and Uyghurs, I would still feel all the same.
I bought and tried hundred of different pens and Pentel Energel 0.7mm are the best.
Smooth writing, bold colors, dark black. Now I buy them by pack of ten. Look no futher they are the best
While I didn't go through a hundred pens, I too settled on the Jetstream. Although I find the pen is not the classiest designed, the writing of it is just sooooooooo nice, and I suppose ergonomic enough to make up for it's looks. Also among my test set of maybe a handful of pens, I found the ink to be the best of what I tested (least smudge, quick dry, water proof, etc)
Yep, I tend to use the .5 more because I write on smaller notepads, but I also keep a few .7s around (of the pentel energel). I also really like the pilot g-2 .7, and will randomly switch.
I did like the Pentel Energel 0.7mm a lot, until tried to cut waste and use the refills. Turns out the rubber and plastic becomes loose over time, for about the time you want to use the 3rd refill.
So I dropped the idea, bought 2 Lamy Safari fountain pens to rotate when one goes empty, 1 pot of Diamine ink, 1 blunt-tipped syringe to refill and never had to think about this topic again :)
I had this problem too but Pentel recently (or at least I didn’t see until recently) released an alloy version using the same refills that should last for a long time. It’s a bit expensive for a pen but can really recommend if you liked the plastic version.
I use my fountain pen all the time out of mostly laziness because my ballpoint pens run out and I don’t want to make a trip to the store to pick up (or find lost in my house). A jar of ink lasts forever.
School days in the 80s/90s had us writing a lot, with fountain pens. I still own few fountain pens now and I love writing with them at home. My current favorite is Muji's Aluminum Fountain Pen[1] -- a not-so costly but fantastic fountain pen.
I can get used to any of fountain pens pretty quickly, even the worst and the cheapest ones. The advantage of growing up using hand-me downs during school, is that you learn tricks. Here is one, for the bad fountain pens, I slant it to "my angle" of writing and sand it (very gently) against either a very fine stone/rock or go a carpenter's shed and sand it against their finest sandpaper.
I have been trying to teach my daughter to write more, especially with fountain pens but she seems to not like it so much yet. She does like having few around -- perhaps seeing me line up my pens nicely on my table inspires her.
Huh. I never even realized that in other countries schools might have pupils write with ink pens. Here it’s 100% pencils and has been at least since the early 90s when I started school.
I find the uniball gel pen substantially easier to write with, so conversely I find all other ball point pens harder to write with. I know in college there were certain pens that hurt to use all day and I quickly got rid of those.
Most of my favorite pens at the moment are uniball, or take the same refill size and I’ve converted them. Somewhere I have a collapsing fountain pen but I had to be careful of the type of paper and I let it dry up at some point, got it working again, and forgot about it because I found another collapsing pen I could shoehorn the uniball gel into (by swapping the spring)
I had to use a (cartridge) fountain pen at school (90s, UK primary school), and they were awful - the nibs were scratchy, and prone to breaking if you pressed even slightly too hard, and they leaked fairly often. A decent fountain pen is a completely different experience.
I've mostly switched over to Staedtler Triplus fineliners for general writing - they're much easier on my hands/wrists[1], but retain the convenience of ballpoints.
[1] I have a joint disorder, and writing more than a couple of lines with most ballpoints will make my fingers and/or wrists hurt. I can write for 20-30 minutes with the fineliners before they trigger the same issue.
Fountain pen technology has come a long way! I've never had any problems with leaky pens. You can get some very nice fountain pens for around $20 these days.
One of my favorite fountain pens is the Pilot Varsity - it’s a disposable fountain pen. Lots of ink combined with one of the best nibs out there, no matter the price. There’s an entire set of users out there dedicated to figuring out ways to refill these so they can re-use the nib. I haven’t had a single one leak on me, either.
Yeah, in my foreys into fountain pens they were one that "felt good" to write with. Some had tips which snagged when you end up "pushing" as a lefty, but the Varsity was smooth.
If you want to feel fancier, the Pilot Metropolitan uses the same nib (in fact, since they don't sell replacements, you end up buying a pack of Varsities if you need to replace the nib).
In my school we had to use a fountain pen up until fourth grade (lefties had an exception). The day I could finally ditch the fountain pen was a happy one indeed.
Nowadays I use gel pens, best of both worlds. I definitely agree that ballpoint pens are hard on the wrists.
This is strange to me. When I was in school (1970s/80s in the USA) we used pencils almost exclusively. Rarely, the final draft of an essay might be required in ink (pen type immaterial), or typed, but not below grade 6-ish.
I do like the feel of writing with a fountain pen but never used one until I was an adult. I still prefer pencil for note-taking and rough draft writing.
From my point of view, writing prose in pencil is for little children. Under 8 years old, ish.
I also don't see much appeal in fancy, expensive pens. The cheapest ones here are about €5 from a supermarket, so something for €15-20 is usually decent.
I think the problem is only with people who never learned to write with fountain pain in the first place.
Fountain pen teaches to not press on the paper and keep correct angle while you write. When you don't need to press the pen you don't need to have a tight grip on it and it allows for relaxed grip.
Once you learned to have a tight grip on your writing instrument you transfer it to other instruments. So if you've learned incorrectly with ballpoint pen, you will have hard time figuring out what the fuss about fountain pens is all about.
That's why my kid who is currently actively learning writing is writing with fountain pen exclusively until he learns relaxed grip and good posture while writing. I assume then it won't matter much what he is going to write with.
What's the difference between the kind of strain you get from pressing harder with a ball point pen and the kind of strain you get from lifting weights in a gym? I guess what I'm really asking is if your body will adapt to the increased hand strain? Is it a short-term problem?
Wouldn't you describe cardio as continuous, repetitive strain with no recovery? I would've assumed writing is more of an endurance type of strain, but perhaps the strain due to writing occurs at an intensity that is analogous to lifting weights.
The type of muscles in your heart are quite different from the types of muscle in your hands.
The muscles you use to move around are called skeletal muscles. One of the ways they get stronger is through a process where you exercise and use them, and this causes damage to the muscles (microtears), and the body responds to these microtears by rebuilding the muscles stronger. This is why you need a recovery period when strength training... the strength training is actually damaging your body, and your body becomes stronger after recovery.
It's also why you don't want to overtrain. Too much training and you get too much damage to your body, and you won't be stronger afterwards.
With enough overtraining, damaged muscles will die off, releasing cell contents into your bloodstream and causing rhabdomyolysis, which is quite serious, but fairly rare.
> The type of muscles in your heart are quite different from the types of muscle in your hands.
Yes, but cardio doesn't solely use cardiac muscle.
What I was trying to get at was that when doing cardio, you are using the muscles in your legs and/or upper body, albeit at a lower intensity than when strength training. GP seemed to be implying that because writing is a continuous, repetitive strain, that it is a purely degradative action. But my point was that cardio can be described in the same way and has clear benefits for muscle health.
Therefore, my question was really whether the problem is the fact that writing is done for long periods with little recovery or more to do with people holding their pens in a weird way, or something. Put more generally, an issue of form.
I’m not sure if you were asking a question or if you’re trying to lead the discussion in a particular direction.
Cardio doesn’t solely use cardio muscle, true, but your cardiovascular system is what you are targeting with the exercise and it does not need a recovery period, unlike other parts of your body you would exercise.
You can do intense cardio every single day, or at least nearly every day, because the cardiovascular system works differently from your skeletal muscles. You should not do an intense deadlift session every day, because your skeletal muscles need time to heal.
So I would in general not try to draw many comparisons between cardiovascular exercise and other types of exercise.
Cardio mainly exercises your lungs and heart, which is built differently from most of your muscles (it's designed for constant use). Also if you eat too much, it's good for burning up excess calories.
It has mixed benefits for the rest of your body. You'll improve your muscle tone a bit through running or cycling or swimming, but repetitive strain injuries are also a risk.
For most people, the benefits of cardio far outweigh the downsides, but on balance it's not necessarily good for your joints and ligaments.
The other answers nailed it -- different types of muscles -- but even so, if you do cardio every day for 8 hours a day, your body may still break down. If you do it for 16 hours a day, your body WILL break down.
Hard labor is continuous cardio. Hard labor isn't healthy. Athletes have specific training regiments with up times and recovery times.
If I go on a 60 mile bike ride, I need at least a few days downtime to recover. If I'm biking 20-30 miles, I'll do that at most every other day. And if I lift weights, I'll alternate upper body and lower body days. And if I'm doing basic calisthenics and stretching, I can do that every day.
you lift weights along muscle systems designed to handle load.
Your wrist/elbows etc are relatively weak. See tennis elbow, etc.
The other issue is that you end up writing 4-6hrs a day in school 5days a week, wheras the gym is something like, maybe 20 minutes per muscle group? depending. And that doesn't tend to be more than 3-4x a week.
I used to weightlift with a much lighter ex. The one thing I noticed was that even tho I could lift substantially more, our recovery rate was basically the same. So I'd end up with a lot more nagging injuries over time if I didn't properly take care of myself.
It also doesn't help that nobody teaches you proper form for holding a pencil. You start a sport, you're gonna be made aware that there are ways to do the sport that immediately hurt, and that there are ways to do it that won't hurt immediately but will fuck you up for sure in the long run, or even the medium run.
There are ways to hold a pen or pencil that will fuck you up in the long run for sure, and most people hold one in these ways. I didn't learn proper form until I was in my twenties, via lore passed on from master animators I was working under. I've since seen the same knowledge in places like "old penmanship manuals" but it sure was not a thing I was taught as a kid learning to write.
Fountain pens, you kinda have to learn decent form to use. A Bic? You can write with any kind of grip, even one that looks like you tied your fingers in a knot around it.
Yeah, if you look at the old manuals, they almost spend more words explaining how to sit, position the paper, and hold your arm than how to form the letters.
Hint for lefties: move the paper around until it is at an angle that doesn't cramp your wrist.
For some reason everyone's instinct is to align the paper with the desk, and then contort themselves around it.
Yeah, rest days are incredibly important. If you wrote until your hands are tired and then did not write again until you were fully recovered, perhaps you could do something akin to weight training for writing. That isn't what anyone actually does, though.
Lifting weights generally has variety in motion and muscle group. Writing is doing the same, short lift - without using the full range of motion - for the same muscle group day after day after day.
It isn't a short-term issue: Comic artists often work long days (contract work) and work until their arm doesn't function well anymore (often decades before retirement age). Writing (and drawing) can produce a number of repetitive strain injuries (hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder). You can increase your tolerance if you are healthy, but it still is going to lead to injuries over time and you are better off taking more breaks than you think you need and learning not to press as hard as people are prone to do. You do "improve", but the improvement isn't really in strength but fine motor control and motion and things like that (especially with drawing).
There are rollerballs with regular ink now, such as the one I have from Schneider. It does need a refill, but writing with it is efortless, just like with the fountain pen and the writing also looks good because the trail is continuous. I think they have a ceramic ball tip instead of a metal one. I absolutely love them. One can also reuse the cartridges and refill them with regular ink using a syringe if they can be bothered to do so.
I had a teacher who considered the mess it leaves on the front short pocket as payback for jumping/running around in school grounds - as sort of a sign of lack of discipline.
There was also a whole thing about rich vs poor in the classroom - the ones who still struggled with a leaking pen vs the one who always brought the fanciest ones. I went to public school, so I could see this right before my eyes. We did have school uniforms, but the pen and the lunch box were the only ones for the rich kids to show off.
Technology aside, the cheap and functional ballpoint pen did change the life in subtle ways for so many kids.
Right - ballpoint pens are horrible to write with and your writing will look terrible, but they are useful in an austere environment like a plane or outdoors, especially when they're the pressurised variant.
High quality ball points are a lot less scratchy than the cheap ones. I've used some that are definitely less scratchy than a fountain pen with a fine nib.
I also write for long periods of time, and use a mechanical pencil with softer lead (2B). It doesn't replace a pen when you need a pen, but if you just want to avoid hand strain, this is another option.
I always use a pencil over a pen when ever I can. I write a lot outdoors and pens don't work in the rain. And there's also the story of pens and pencils in space I like.
Sadly, that very entertaining story is certainly apocryphal. Pencils have their own problems. A device that sheds conductive graphite into a weightless environment full of electronics is not necessarily an obvious choice, nor is something made out of dry wood and graphite that needs to be regularly shaved into fine strips for a high-oxygen environment.
Yeah you're absolutely correct its pretty much fake but I still like the story, just like I like the toothpaste factory story. Essentially keep it simple stupid, don't over engineer, and do your research.
I still use fountain pens, although that is arguably an affectation--they were already on the way out when I was in school. Cursive reduces the number of times you lift the stylus from the paper, greatly reducing the number of blots or gaps in flow of a fountain pen. Biros don't have that problem. Still, writing in cursive on good paper with a proper fountain pen has an aesthetic that I'd not like to give up.
Arguably, the shift to keyboarding completed cursive's downfall. My children report that, although they did learn cursive in primary school, they now (High School) don't know anyone who uses it. I've had post-secondary students complain that they have difficultly reading cursive comments on submissions, even if I've taken pains to write neatly (I no longer challenge them thus.)
I do find one thing puzzling: why has the effort once expended on teaching elegant cursive not shifted over to instruction in touch typing? None of my students report having had instruction in that (I've polled them several times). It seems odd to me that very so very few of the so-called "digital natives" I work with can challenge the skills I learned on an IBM electric 45 years ago.
Some schools do prioritize touch typing. At the middle and high school I went to in the US, there were several mandatory computing courses to teach some basic computing skills. One of the main things they worked on was touch typing, which did work out to a good chunk of your grade. They had some typing tutor software which would report results to the teacher's database. For tests, they would drape a cloth over your hands and keyboard. Intentionally pulling the towel away was considered academic dishonesty and followed the same kind of rules as cheating.
The school I went to did have an elementary school associated with it. From what I understand they also made a point to teach typing proficiency as a focus on computer classes.
Some schools do teach it, but I do agree it appears it is sometimes overlooked. I have many, many peers who despite having a job behind a keyboard every day have poor typing form, cannot touch type, and have some incredibly low WPM. Even some basic training on typing could potentially make them much faster typists. But its just not a priority in their lives.
I think I witnessed the exact moment cursive officially died in my area. I was born in 1998 and some time in primary school (Don't remember when) the school was teaching non cursive to the lower years and cursive at about year 5 (I think) the year I reached that year they had removed it from all years and it was never taught for the rest of the time I was in school.
The problem with this is twofold:
1. There isn't much to touch on a screen except the screen. On a keyboard, some keys are different sizes and we often have a key that allows us to know proper finger placement (mine is j and f: I've used keyboards with a dot on d and k too).
2. Cell phone layout isn't as standardized as a qwerty keyboard. Sure, the letters are in the same spot, but symbols aren't always there.
We have other methods to quicken touch screen typing, though: Swipe-friendly keyboards and predictive text.
It is likely hard to impossible to touch-type on a cellphone: the keyboard is always on the screen, so the eyes (nit touch) constantly help adjust fingers' positions. This does allow for impressive speed, though, especially with autocorrect.
I recently switched to a fountain pen - way easier to write with and way less tension. Neil Gaiman suggested it and so I gave it a shot. Never going back - my handwriting is better (but I write cursive) and it is easier to write longer without strain.
I love fountain pens too, and recently tried to switch back to my classic Parker 45.
Sadly, the plastic lining of the reservoir had perished, so the pen wouldn't suck ink up. I tried a replacement reservoir, but it didn't work. So I tried a different type, with a screw based impeller mechanism, and got ink all over my fingers and desk. Some of the ink went up into the reservoir, but wouldn't flow back down through the nib for the purpose of writing.
I don't like disposable fountain pen ink. The plastic is bad for the environment, and the experience is half of what I am trying to get away from by returning to the mechanism of the refillable apparatus.
I tried buying a new fountain pen, for $50 from Officeworks. It has a screw based impeller mechanism that has the same shortcomings as the one I tried with my Parker 45.
Has anyone seem a replacement reservoir for Parker 45 that works?
Can anyone recommend a non-refill fountain pen?
I'd love to return to using a fountain pen! Not just for ergonomic reasons. The writing looks better too.
I'm new to fountains and enjoy my Lamy Safari even if it is inexpensive plastic. The refillable reservoir is of the screw-suction type but I don't use it that way. I use an inexpensive syringe to transfer ink.
Did you get the converter for the Lamh Safari? I actually use the same for cost reasons (and I like the grip) but I use the disposable cartridges, which seems wasteful. I have just heard that the Safari converter is pretty quick to run empty?
Yes, I did get the official converter. I think it was a waste as it doesn't do anything aside from the not very useful screw-suction thing. Even when fully out the suction mechanism does take up space that could be ink volume and after the first disposable that came with it refills have come more often.
If I ever use a disposable cartridge again I'll try reusing it instead.
Refilling with a syringe is fairly easy. Lots of places sell blunt-tip syringes or you might be able to get away with insulin needles (I'm not sure -- pink tipped luers are the smallest I've ever used).
Do use luer-lock though, because the other kind of syringes suck. Just ask your local pharmacy -- they usually carry them and they can be used for all sorts of non-illicit-drug reasons.
In the US/Canada Lee Valley sells a set of blunt tip syringes for inks and glues.
I use a TWSBI ECO F (~$30) every day. It is one of the more inexpensive piston filled demonstrators out there. The writing experience is the best I've had so far (when paired with heavier Rhodia or Clairefontaine paper). The only downsides are (1) it uses a screw cap mechanism (which is preferred by some in the fountain pen community because it doesn't fail like snap-on cap mechanisms; but is slower and less convenient) (2) It's made of plastic -- very high quality plastic -- but plastic nonetheless. It's more of a technological pen than a classic pen. That said, I would rate the writing experience of the TWSBI much higher than that of the more popular Pilot Metropolitan (I should know, I own 4 Pilot Metros).
Also, as much as I'm a fan of fountain pens, they do have some downsides. The ink tends to smear/smudge easily (even quick drying ones) on normal paper, which makes them less suitable for scribbling marginalia on paperbacks. And even their extra fine nibs aren't that fine, so one can't squeeze as many words into the margins. Therefore, I use a different pen for marginalia: a Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3mm (~$3). It's a gel pen with a very very fine nib (0.3mm is finer than Western F fountain nibs). Fountain pen inks are also usually water soluble so they're less suitable for use cases that require permanence, like say signing the back of a credit card, so I find myself having to switch to a cheap ballpoint in such cases.
To me, fountain pens optimize for one experience and one experience only -- the pleasure of writing on good paper. It trades off versatility to achieve this optimization.
you might already know this, but Noodler makes an extremely quick drying ink called the Bernanke. It's available in blue and black and dries way faster than anything I've ever seen. It doesn't feather or bleed on any paper I've tried it on.
I used to use Staples Sustainable Earth notebooks, now I've started using their TruRed series. I also use Rhodia notebooks, but am switching to TruRed because they're easier to find, cheaper, and handle my other inks better (the rhodia stuff actually performs terribly with all my other inks -- no idea what the deal is).
Combined with a 0.3mm Platinum nib I never have any issues. If you've tried Parker Quink it's significantly faster.
Thanks. I haven't tried the Bernanke (sounds like it's popular among left-handed folks) but I have a bottle of American Eel. It's just me, but I like really black inks. Noodler inks while quick drying aren't black enough for me. I've tried a bunch and finally landed on Rohrer & Klingner's Leipziger Schwartz. Thanks for the tip on TruRed. I have several Platinum Preppy Fines but results are still a little less fine than the Hi-Tec-C 0.3mm (likely due to higher inkflow).
I settled on Noodler's Heart of Darkness (the onyx black that is also bulletproof) and Roller Eel (which is Heart of Darkness but lubricated for refillable rollerball use) for my black ink needs. Noodlers BP Black was more like Noodler's Bulletproof charcoaly gray for me.
Shaking them before use is a habit I have, not sure if that helps or is just a placebo tho.
Platinum Plaisir is also a great pen! I combined with Noodler's Bernanke Blue. It dries extremely quickly and it's very smooth writing. At 0.3mm (Platinum Fine), it's really hard to tell the difference between inks but Bernanke Blue is a fairly pleasant blue.
I think I paid 1000 JPY for it, but these days it's around $10-$20 on amazon.
Apart from Lamy Safari, another option is the Pilot Metropolitan. If you want smooth writing, get a Medium or larger. Pilot Medium's are the equivalent of Fine in most countries.
I have a fine Pilot Metropolitan and went looking for a Medium tip to try it out. Unfortunately, they don't sell the tips separately, but I did find a list of Pilot pens which are said to have compatible tips: Plumix, Pluminix, Prera, Penmanship, 78G, Kakuna.
It looks the Plumix is $10, which seems steep for the tip, but I guess it's better than paying another $20-ish for a second Metropolitan.
On another note, I came across the Platinum Curidas pen. It's a clicky fountain pen! I'm very tempted to buy one, but I've never spent anywhere near $80 on a pen before.
Check out the Pilot Vanishing Point. Fantastic pen, also click-style and with a reasonably good seal while disengaged. I've been using mine as a daily writer for the better part of a decade. Unfortunately the price has crept up in recent years.
You can certainly go deep with ink and pens and whatnot, but you can buy a Lamy for cheap on Amazon and just stick with cartridges and still get a far superior result.
If anyone feel like their writing is sloppy and avoid writing because of it, try a fountain pen.
For what it's worth, the consensus on /r/fountainpens and other fountain pen enthusiast sites is that you risk receiving counterfeit Lamy Safari pens when purchasing from Amazon. These fakes often have poor quality nibs and ruin people's first experience with fountain pens. The recommendation is to purchase a pen through a reputable dealer so you know that you are getting the real thing.
There's a post here on Imgur [0] regarding an individual's experience after receiving a fake on Amazon if you want to compare the fake and original.
Thanks for this post. Bought a Lamy several years ago and never crossed my mind it could be counterfeit. It felt so scratchy when writing that eventually I just gave up on it. Now when I compare it to the fake one from the images in the post above, it has all the telltale signs.
She has lupus, so holding and writing with a ballpoint pen is agony for her and her hands on bad joint days. She can usually do okay with a gel ball roller, but one day I let her try my fountain pen and it was the least painful writing experience in her life.
She emailed the Goulet Pen company for suggestions on good pens for lupus/arthritis and got a detailed response with suggestions. They were fantastic and helped her place an order for a less expensive pen that fit her hand better to test the waters for future orders.
In Canada, Wonderpens is an excellent source of fountain pens & inks (based in Toronto). Stylo is also great in Montreal and ships.
But you might have a local shop (most cities seem to have at least one -- either catering to artists or catering to the wedding/cards types).
The Lamy Safari is a great starter but I found the Platinum Plaisir and the cheaper Platinum Preppy to also be great introductions. The Plaisir also comes in finer tips, down to 0.3mm, which helps for those of us with angry writing :) It's also quite a bit cheaper, and the piston refill is cheaper.
(although these days I just use a syringe to refill as drawing ink up any other way seems to never work right...)
More making the point that the barrier to entry is low considering Pilot makes a $3 disposable fountain pen. I suppose that would have been a better example.
The wording of this article is very strange. All references to fountain pens happen in the past tense, as if they did not exist anymore. Millions of people still use fountain pens every day. The author lives in a bubble of ballpoint users or what?
I don't think so. I have lived, studied, and taught in three different European countries and everywhere, a sizeable proportion of students used fountain pens (a large majority in the case of France). For my part, I use mostly rollers and fountain pens, and I hate the high pressure needed to use ballpoints.
EDIT: In any case, even if most people use only ballpoint pens, it seems very hard to live without ever crossing a fountain pen user (as seems to be the case for the author of this article).
In the US, fountain pen use is common among people who have a particular interest in pens (e.g. collecting them), and almost zero among everyone else. I’d say they’re roughly comparable to mechanical keyboards in this respect.
No one at any level of school is required to use fountain pens; typically, students use a mix of graphite pencils, ballpoint pens, and rollerballs.
I would expect a large fraction of Americans, maybe even the majority, to be surprised to learn that fountain pens are still in common use anywhere in the world.
I am born in 1981 in denmark, I have never ever seen a fountain pen in use in my schooling or anywhere else in real life (maybe on TV or something). Its always been pencils or ballpoint (or more modern versions of that.)
I don't think I've ever seen someone use a fountain pen in person. In school most people used pencils almost exclusively, and the exceptions used ballpoint or gel pens.
Growing up in India it was pretty common to see others in school use fountain pens, although most (including me) used gel pens due to the impracticality and cost of fountain pens.
Gel pens feel so much better than regular ball point pens and are still almost as cheap.
In Finland at least I have never seen anybody use a fountain pen in real life. I’m pretty sure almost nobody even knows how to use one. Not that schools make pupils use ballpoints either—it’s 100% pencils here.
I live in Australia, and I'm pretty certain I've never even seen a fountain pen. I would have definitely put them in the same "only used as movie props" bucket as quills were it not for your comment.
I didn't know fountain pens still existed until two years ago. I bought a Pilot Metropolitan and I've found it to be an improvement. However, I still have not seen another in the wild.
Err, "an improvement" probably needs clarifying, though. It moves across paper much more smoothly than the ball point pens I've used, and I find reloading the ink to be enjoyable (I've also gone two years without the pen disappearing into the void, something which has never happened for me when using disposable pens).
It does seem like fountain pens require heavier paper than ball-points, though. Maybe it's the ink I bought, but trying to write on the standard lined paper used in schools leads to a lot of smudges and bleeding ink. Standard weight printer paper is fine, unless it was left out on a few humid days.
I'm not exactly deep in the fountain pen community but it looks like to me that fountain pens are the pen version of mechanical keyboards or mechanical watches. The ordinary person doesn't own one and would likely see no benefit from one but a bunch of enthusiasts continue to keep them going.
The bic caps are also great as makeshift plastic prybars to pry open electronics :P They get thicker along the clip so you can often use them to keep pressure and they don't cause 'bite marks' because they're made of really soft plastic.
Of course spudgers are a better tool for the job but if you don't have them to hand, an old credit card and a few bic caps are great :)
Yeah, I has same non-sweet memories: when I was in school (there are was not good pens on the market yet) many of us put a small piece of rubber tube on a pen as "DIY softener" to relieve pressure on the fingers.
Later when I sew new pens with rubber tube putted by default on the market it keep me smile a little.
I wrote a lot in university. My favorite pen is the Pilot G-2 07 black. It can make the tapered points of Chinese & Japanese characters. Its only shortcoming is that the ink takes about a minute to dry.
UNI JetStream 0.7mm black has quick-drying ink and is just as smooth. But it cannot make the tapered line ends, is more expensive, and has a counterfeit problem.
I use a mix of pens. Often a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen, Marvy Le Pen (almost felt-like), and also gel rollers from Muji (0.38, 0.5, 0.7).
Overall, the Le Pen is my favorite, but I notice an improvement in style and consistency with the fountain pen.
I think one of the main differences between 'the old days' and what we're taught now is that we're not raised to write from the shoulder, which can lead to extra strain and exhaustion. I'm still not great with this, but when I make a concerted effort to write like this, I find that my writing is far more consistent and effortless.
The same! I learned to love them even more when a friend who's a car designer showed me that you can vary the pressure to shade with them almost like a pencil. IOW they are good sketching tools.
Well, I guess there's also that Jason Bourne scene...that was a Bic, no? ;-)
This author maintains that fountain pens are amenable to cursive, whereas ballpoints are better at printing. Thus, the demise of Palmer method and Spencerian script and the preponderance of printing.
link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...
Anybody else here who uses Fineliners? I've only stuck to fineliners ever since the first time I've used it, the upgrade in comfort and penmanship was extraordinary. Yes fountain pens are great and I've used them most of my life, as most ballpoints weren't suitable for my left hand writing style. But fineliners are way less cumbersome
I had to look up what this was. At first I thought it was the same as a felt tipped pen, which is what I primarily use, but I guess we're both in different minorities.
EDIT: guess I'll add why I like felt tipped pens. I like how the ink dries quickly, still have control over how much is being put to page, are fairly cheap, and personally I like the stratchiness/resistance on the page, it helps my handwriting I think.
I really love Marvy Le Pen. It glides smoothly on paper. It doesn't leak on an airplane. It's inexpensive and comes in many colors. I find I have to hold it almost perfectly vertically. Just out of FOMO I would be interested in knowing if there's anything better. From time to time I try something else but have never found one better.
A few years ago I went round the house and threw out every ballpoint / biro (replacing them with Uni-ball UM-153S which are much more pleasant to use). There had to have been at least a hundred of them. So many were free from conferences or charities.
This article rather misrepresents the social aspect of handwriting before ballpoint pens, as it ignores the use of dip pens and pencils. Oddly, there is an illustration of a dip pen rather than a fountain pen.
"Fountain pens were messy and needed regular refilling"
So the solution is to not make the refilling better and less messy, it was to invent landfill. Not only from having to replace the pen when it ran out of ink, but from high failure rate of the aforesaid pens.
I was thinking the same thing, and see a lot of similar thoughts in the comments. Ballpoints are convenient but hurt my hand and are not a pleasure to write with.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...