This is very cool. Here is interesting application of something like this. My handwriting is pretty bad, and worse still when writing fast. When I am teaching, a lot of what I write is worse than I would like it to be.
I could teach a system like this my very slow neat handwriting. And then as I write on my whiteboard while teaching, it replaces my quick bad handwriting with the neater handwriting.
i know it might sound dumb, but have you tried playing with a fountain pen?
The feedback is way different from a ballpoint pen and it also depends on paper and the kind of ink. It makes writing way less "predictable" and a bit more enjoyable.
a cheap one (5-15$) with a medium nib might be a good start... some people move on to collect fountain pens, but i do most on my (on paper) writing with a ~20$ Pelikan Jazz.
I know your comment is in earnest and I don't mean to make fun of you, but there is something so funny in our Americanised world where everything is reduced to "it's not you, you just need to buy the correct gizmo that will solve all your problems."
Fountain pens enthusiasts are like music gear or mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, that justify their hobby and believe spending on the next shiny thing is the key to fulfil their whatever, until the next shiny thing arrives.
The thing is... if one dislikes or doesn't care about writing that they have basically forgotten how to, it is not spending money on a fancy writing implement that is gonna turn them into a medieval monk scribe.
> but there is something so funny in our Americanised world where everything is reduced to "it's not you, you just need to buy the correct gizmo that will solve all your problems."
OTOH, it's an improvement over the other world of solving everything through "discipline" and other kinds of wishful thinking.
Like, you can complain and worry that your kid can't seem to learn how to cut things right with their scissors, try to force some discipline and conscientiousness into them - or you can stop causing them and yourself so much grief and realize that a left-handed person needs left-handed scissors, as using the wrong type for your hand works to prevent the cutting action.
> The thing is... if one dislikes or doesn't care about writing that they have basically forgotten how to, it is not spending money on a fancy writing implement that is gonna turn them into a medieval monk scribe.
The thing is, it does actually... Because it "forces" you to slow down and take time for it.
I hated writing (heavily dyslexic) but after getting a fountainpen and purposely slowing down I noticed it went better.
Now I write in my own language again, I spend whole evenings writing scenes, essays, debates and letters.
Sometimes it is the tool that forces a bit of change (if you want to change of course).
A LAMY Safari with its triangle grip vastly improved my handwriting by forcing me to use a different grip than I’d naturally use. So yes, for me, the correct cheap gizmo solved all my problems.
I've played with different miracle gizmos all my life, nothing worked. When I go slow and careful I can write like a 2nd grader. As a kid my teachers were constantly mad at me until one realized I was trying and got me testing - sadly dysgraphia (likely the diagnosis I needed, though I was never formally diagnosed) wouldn't exist for several more years and so I couldn't get the right help. (if any help exists, I haven't been able to find anything useful and I'm not sure as an adult if it is worth the time - there are so many other things I can do instead)
To be clear, the Safari showed me that I can write without loathing the process. I feel I've given it a fair shot, though, and I'm back to typing everything instead. I'll use a paper and a pen to jot quick notes during a meeting or something but that's the extent of it.
Turns out I can get by just fine with hardly ever handwriting anything. The only people disappointed by this are my elementary school teachers who had insisted this was something I needed to care about.
I get where you're coming from, but, given that I own several pens, and my handwriting really differs depending on which pen I'm using, I would say he has a point. Changing the pen you use (even within ballpoints) can significantly impact your handwriting.
In reality, it's a bit more complicated. I've found the following impacts my handwriting:
- Grip format on pen (i.e. shape of pen)
- Ink I'm using
- Paper I'm writing on
- Nib
- And yes, type of pen (ballpoint vs fountain pen)
Having a good pen really helps a lot with writing. I'm not a fountain pen enthusiast, I don't even have one. I just noticed that there's a huge difference between a ballpoint pen and a "rolling ballpoint pen". The naming is confusing, since the ballpoint pen should also be "rolling", but whatever.
Ballpoint pens use a viscous ink that, like graphite in a pencil, needs pressure to be applied. Rollerballs and fountain pens both use low-viscosity inks that flow simply from being touched to the paper.
The latter requires much less effort to write (no constant pressure) and enables writing with the hand held mostly still, using the larger muscles of the upper arm and shoulder to create the letters. The downside is that they can create impressively large ink blots on your clothing if uncapped/unretracted, and the ink can be smeared if you touch it while wet. But pretty much every writing system still out there in use (i.e., not cuneiform or runes) was designed with a quill or brush as the instrument.
Your style might have to change a bit, but disconnected letters were quite common in medieval Roman-style scripts, which were definitely written with quills.
> that flow simply from being touched to the paper
Or just by itself if you bring it with you on a plane :)
This looks like a perfect rabbit hole I'd be wise to avoid. At least I have a good excuse of being left handed since I would be constantly smearing all the wet ink.
Although it's not a beginner fountain pen in terms of cost (though it is not too expensive, basic models around $160), the Pilot/Namiki Vanishing Point is a retractable fountain pen that does not leak when retracted.
The cartridges for it can, of course, get expensive, but a 1 mL syringe and a big bottle of ink (even Mont Blanc ink is only $25 for 60 mL) will let you refill them cheaply.
I made the original suggestion explicitly to avoid the rabbitholes.
I use a Pelikan Jazz (20$) and a bucket of black cartidriges (100 pieces) I got off amazon for like 8$ (like two years ago).
I got a kaweco fountain pen a few months ago and i honestly regret spending those money, it's a shitty pen, some of the most dumbly-wasted money of my life.
I got one because my wife, who actually is an aficionado, suggested that it would be a good one to carry with me (and it is) due to the non-leak. I would carry it more except that we have some forms at work that are duplicates, requiring pressure, so it's useless for that. A Pilot Precise V5 RT retractable rollerball is nearly as good and cheap (in small quantities, $2-3 apiece).
It would be more charitable to say that the change forced upon yourself by changing your instrument is a straightforward way of making you mindful of what you're doing and make it easier to break bad habits. Yes, you can break bad habits by not doing them with the same tools, but the objective is to change your behaviour, not to demonstrate personal Calvinism.
I definitely write better with some pens than with others, and probably best with fountain pens (I have lost my best fountain pen though).
Its not going to make me write like a scribe creating an illuminated manuscript, but there is an awful lot of room for "better" between that and my usual handwriting with a cheap ball point.
> but there is something so funny in our Americanised world where everything is reduced to "it's not you, you just need to buy the correct gizmo that will solve all your problems."
Sigh... I'm not american and i don't live in the US.
> Fountain pens enthusiasts are like music gear or mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, that justify their hobby and believe spending on the next shiny thing is the key to fulfil their whatever, until the next shiny thing arrives.
Yep, I'm aware, that's why i was explicit on the fact that a ~20$ Pelikan Jazz is just great and "getting into fountain pens" is something that you can definitely avoid (I do avoid it, as a matter of fact).
> The thing is... if one dislikes or doesn't care about writing that they have basically forgotten how to, it is not spending money on a fancy writing implement that is gonna turn them into a medieval monk scribe.
Sure, but billions of people can write just fine with a $0.50 ballpoint pen.
Also, it's not $25 or $2,500 that will stop you from doing 95% of your writing on a physical and smartphone keyboard because that's how society works nowadays. This comment cannot be written with a fountain pen, nor my work emails or communication with friends and relatives. Many people can't write any more simply because they don't really have to.
Probably good advice if you are right handed and have good fine motor skills.
At least way into the 90s kids here learned to write with fountain pens. For me this meant pages full of smudges, forked pens and generally unreadable text.
As soon as I was allowed to switch to a regular pen my handwriting improved a lot (still not great, but better).
I still prefer using ballpoints with schmidt easyflow 9000 ink[1], but yeah rollerballs (gel) are a great midpoint between fountains and ballpoints. My Zebra G-750[2] is super smooth.
You started a flame war. So let me just say that I exclusively use a fountain pen to write. That handwriting is a lot better. But when writing digitally for teaching or meetings, I use a wacom tablet. That is pretty bad for writing.
I've realized that when I use cheap pens on hotel stationery, my handwriting looks terrible, probably because the surfaces are too smooth? Other than fountain pens, are there other alternatives that give more tactile feedback?
It's only half a joke: having to regularly dip the pen in ink, be mindful of how much ink you have, having to swiftly wipe it once in a while to avoid drying ink (& flow issues), forces to slow down & take "micro-breaks".
This benefits the handwriting, but also the quality of the study. And is surprisingly relaxing.
(so called "crow-quill" nibs are relatively cheap, available, carry a fair amount of ink)
What you are asking for is more "tooth", something mostly determined by the paper. Most stationery fans prefer smoother papers, but I agree that after a certain point, increased smoothness makes my handwriting worse.
If you are stuck using a very smooth paper, I would suggest either a fiber-tip or a drier gel pen. Gel pens with a clicker (e.g. Zebra Sarasa) tend to write drier than those with a cap (e.g. Uniball Signo). Also try a fatter tip. Although this may not be acceptable in many situations, a soft pencil may provide even better control on smooth paper.
I write a lot with a fountain pen and if anything it made it harder to understand my handwriting... even the next day I'll have a hard time.
I've considered the "just learn to write better" approach and I've tried here and there but I've been handwriting journals for 28 years and I'm just not sure it's possible to write cleanly at the speed I handwrite at this point. Especially since it's in cursive.
Improving your hand writing is not hard. For whiteboards start out with using block letters only. It will slow you down in the beginning but not for long.
That's one of the "game changing" hints I received during my time as a tutor at university. (One other was to always copy books from back to front; very useful but somewhat outdated now.)
If your copies come out of the machine right-side up and they get stacked on top of each other, then you can just take the finished stack from the machine when finished. Otherwise, you’d have to reverse the stack, which in real life or in a computer is an expensive operation.
My mother had an inkjet printer where the pages came out right-side up. Multi-page documents finished up in reverse order. It was an infuriatingly awful piece of design.
> For whiteboards start out with using block letters only. It will slow you down in the beginning but not for long.
I strongly dislike this advice. The slowing down is probably actually the feature here that works; as for the uppercase, it definitely hurts comprehension. Go lowercase, slow, and deliberately never joining any letters, for your beginning, and I think it will probably be better for all parties involved: reading and comprehension will be improved, you'll get at least as much improvement in your handwriting, probably more, and certainly in a more useful area.
You are right, it is mostly about the slowing down. Switching to the unfamiliar block lettering forces you to go slow. It's a trick, so that you do not have to be deliberate about writing speed but about lettering. In my experience the latter is easier than the former, but obviously YMMV.
I don't know if uppercase hurts comprehension. I think, I have no problems whatsoever. But block letters are not all upper case anyway. You make them of different size to signal upper and lower case, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_letters
From a quick visit to his profile (linked website), he is a physicist. This technology setup is very complicated and against the eternal usage of blackboard in a typical physics department. And to be honest this applies to his suggestion as well but you still at least get the feeling on writing on a board.
You also need the skill of lightning-fast LaTeX typing, and the skill of drawing and drafting with a speed comparable to that of a chalk. You need a canvas-driven tool for that, and your eyes would be on the screen for long periods of time, not contacting the audience.
There are regular white/blackboards that you write on with regular marker that just has a tracker on it, so content appears on the canvas on screen for those who are remote. More advanced versions also have laser projector that can project animations, moving diagrams and text on the same board. My suggestion is to tap the board on the place he wants to write and just type it on regular keyboard, hardly a distraction!
I got a stylus for my iPad and i felt that way at the beginning but I learned that i visualize in my head what I'm going to create right before I draw, and the difference between what's in my mind vs what gets produced is so great, that it feels like a weird uncanny valley and i hate the output.
Not necessarily - your handwriting can sometimes be subtly optimized to the sort of subject matter you write about. For example, when I write lowercase T, I give it a little hook at the bottom. I also write my lowercase L in the cursive form, the tall skinny loop. That keeps similar-looking letters that I use a lot distinct. There must be other examples.
In my handwriting, the letter x is two crossed lines; the algebraic variable x is two Cs back-to-back. This makes it more distinct from a multiplication sign.
I think handwriting is a very personal trait. Some people value good handwriting and they write neat even when they write fast. Others don't. Sadly, a vast majority if the world exists in the other camp. This is why they invented typewriters. If everyone conformed to good handwriting and could agree upon a good writing style standard, the world would have been very different.
I like good handwriting, but good, fast handwriting takes thousands of hours of practice. We used to spend a good chunk of school drilling it into kids, but now it's really hard to justify everyone spend that kind of time when we can technology our way around it and there are other valuable skills to learn.
That’s the same argument for using calculators in the past 30 years and ChatGPT in the last few years. At some point, we lose far more than we gain by “technology our way around” our early development.
Why bother having campfires when we have portable space heaters? Heck, why bother camping at all if we have a nice comfortable space at home? More generally, why do any of the things that connect us to our past?
Personally, I think it’s important to learn by doing and then provide a “here is how we made that easier, and now you know why” type of foundation. Perhaps better is having people develop versions of those solutions for themselves so we don’t just expect someone else to solve all of our problems.
I've known people who valued good handwriting but weren't particularly capable of writing neatly, and others who didn't particularly value it but were capable of staying neat while writing quickly. I think you might be overestimating how much of it is tied to what people value.
That wikipedia article was a great read but I have to agree with GP.
> According to the standards taught in secretarial schools in the mid-20th century, a business letter was supposed to have no mistakes and no visible corrections.
Certainly, there were other reasons like speed, repeatability, official-looking, etc... too. Most typewriters wanted to be cheaper and on-demand printing presses. Some even managed variable width fonts! :)
Oh, the original comment is certainly right in spirit, I just wanted to be pedantic.
But I'm not sure why you quote something about the md-20th century, when we are talking about the (many) invention(s) of the typewriter? They were already old and well-established technology at that point in time.
Fine, make it Helvetica plus whatever other shapes you need. I would assume that Helvetica includes most of extended unicode, since it's such a widely used font, but I could be wrong, and it's beside the point.
If the computer is the one transforming your writing it should be perfectly quick.
To be clear, afaik current handwriting recognition software is not good enough for this. But if we had software that could transform bad handwriting into good handwriting, why not go all the way?
I could teach a system like this my very slow neat handwriting. And then as I write on my whiteboard while teaching, it replaces my quick bad handwriting with the neater handwriting.