Comment by elros
5 days ago
PSA for people with "bad cursive handwriting" but who would like to improve it: Write with FOUNTAIN PENS. Ideally on thicker paper, with something soft below (like more paper for example).
Different writing systems evolved alongside different utensils. Cursive evolved to be written with a quill or a fountain pen. Ballpoint pens are an amazing invention and they have their place, but they optimize for price and practicality, not necessarily for an æsthetically pleasing legible outcome. People say they have "bad handwriting" but their setup is a Bic pen on a thin sheet of paper on top of a hard surface: well, everyone's handwriting is bad in this setup.
In France, back when I went to school, not sure now, though I hope it hasn't changed, as a child, you'd only be allowed to use fountain pens. Kids learning to write have constantly stained hands while they learn to use it properly, almost as a rite of passage. I'm very thankful to have learned it like that.
As a left handed person, fountain pens are basically a no-go. What actually helped improve my handwriting was not doing cursive, but writing each letter individually, which forces me to pause between each letter. Still using the lower case forms (though I did try all caps for a while), but just forcing myself to slow down. Still have problems with 9 vs 4 though
I’m left handed, with the right ink and paper this isn’t a huge problem. I picked up fountain pens a year ago and I will never go back to regular pens for my own writing.
Left-to-right writing as a left-handed person involves a lot of pen(cil) pushing, which is a big no-go for fountain pens.
If it works for you, I'm willing to bet you're twisting your hand in a D position (going over and around the cursor), which I sometimes see left-handed people do. I have cramps just watching that.
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Please share what the right fountain pen, ink and paper would be for a left-handed person to avoid smearing everything to kingdom come! (Asking with honest curiosity as a fellow leftie who would love to be able to use a fountain pen).
I swear by uniball jet stream pens, they feel much nicer than a ball point and dry fast enough for me to use them but would love a true fountain pen setup instead!
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I'm also left handed and the closest thing I've found to fountain pens are rollerball pens, it's very smooth and easy to write with them, they are sharp and dry instantly.
I'm confused. The only thing both have in common is that they are pens. For the rest they are on opposite ends of the pen spectrum. Unless a pencil or a felt tip are called pens as well?
Lamy has left-handed nibs for their pens. So there are options.
> In France, back when I went to school, not sure now, though I hope it hasn't changed, as a child, you'd only be allowed to use fountain pens. Kids learning to write have constantly stained hands while they learn to use it properly, almost as a rite of passage. I'm very thankful to have learned it like that.
In Slovenia, back when I went to school, we all learned with fountain pens and cursive. From 1st to 8th grade you were required to write in fountain pain. If you turned in an assignment written in pencil, it was legit for the teacher to use their eraser and give you an F for turning in empty paper. (They never did this but threatened it a lot).
As soon as high school hit, the restriction lifted and we could use any utensil and whatever font as long as it was legible. Everyone switched to ballpoint pens and some bastardized combination of print and cursive.
I still use my specific combo of print and cursive today, it's like encryption. Very fast to write, very slow sometimes impossible to read. And that's okay, it turns out that anything I write down by hand gets etched into my memory forever. Just seeing the rough shape of the letters brings it back. Sometimes just seeing roughly what page of my notebook it's on is enough to remember what I was thinking.
> it turns out that anything I write down by hand gets etched into my memory forever
That's an exam cramming technique regardless of handwriting quality :)
> If you turned in an assignment written in pencil, it was legit for the teacher to use their eraser and give you an F for turning in empty paper. (They never did this but threatened it a lot).
I find this slightly amusing/ironic because many (most?) fountain pen inks are not waterproof. I had a sheet of paper that was full of (fountain pen written) writing on my desk when I spilled a glass of water -- after the paper dried there was hardly any evidence that there had been writing on the paper. I know that's not the parent's point, but something turned in that was written with a fountain pen would be easier to remove: a teacher would just need to dunk the paper in water!
> many (most?) fountain pen inks are not waterproof.
I assumed this was for child friendliness - you just know kids are going to get ink on their fingers etc while changing cartridges from time to time.
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Apparently the inks used in antiquity were not waterproof either. Even though vellum or high quality parchment could last several centuries (if not eaten by moths or other bugs), a single slip of a beverage could erase an entire scroll. Perhaps that's a primary reason that 90% of the works written before the fall of Rome have been lost.
Indeed, pencil is one of the best writing implements for archival purposes. As long as one doens't deliberately try to get the graphite off, it'll probably stay on.
> From 1st to 8th grade you were required to write in fountain pain.
Fountain pens or ballpoint pens?
(I do believe it was a fountain of pain either way :)
The trick is to realize that you never even needed to write it at all
Writing while thinking is more productive than prompting a Markov chain. Also it's free and benefits your brain.
I agree. The thing with fountain pens that many sibling commenters miss is that they run the ink so much more smoothly, which means you can use much less force when guiding the pen. It's not just pining for the old ways but that the writing feels completely different with a different class of tool.
I spent a bunch of time working through https://www.briem.net/free-books/handwriting-repair and am really satisfied with the improvement.
With a really good ballpoint there's no difference. Saying this as someone who had to use fountain pens throughout the school. I now been using UB-157 for years and it is entirely effortless.
Depends what you mean by ballpoint. For a liquid ink rollerball, that's true or very close. For a gel ink pen, or an oil-based standard ballpoint, that's very much not true. Conventional ballpoints require much more pressure than a rollerball (like the UB-157) or a fountain pen. Gel pens are in-between.
No, fountain pens have a "cool" factor and can be made for decorative stuff, but that's it.
Sure the super cheap bic pens that come in boxes of 100 aren't great, but that's because they're cheap (besides being inexpensive). Something like those G2 gel pens that are also available everywhere for not very much (fairly inexpensive, but not pejorative-cheap) these days work just fine.
Fountains also feel incredibly good to write with once you find the right nib + pen + ink combo you prefer.
Deliberate practice is the #1 way to get better at most skills, and making the activity feel good will encourage that: if it feels good to write, you'll probably be more deliberate when doing it and really think about the strokes you're making.
Then you have a few "oh hey, if I do this with this part of the letter it looks really nice" moments, and people start commenting on the quality of your handwriting
> find the right nib + pen + ink combo
You left out paper. I have fountain pens that I love to use on particular types of paper. However, on the paper I mostly use (cheap paper) fountain pens aren't great...
See, here's what I don't get: Who wants to go through the trouble? Buying tons of nibs, pens, inks, and paper to find one I like, when I go months without even picking up a normal pencil or pen? I'm really curious what people are still writing by hands these days, especially where others would have the ability to comment on it. I don't think I've even used a pen for a signature in god knows, since all the doctor's offices, etc, these days either have touchscreens or email you the forms to fill out online. Are you writing for fun? Doing math? What am I missing here?
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Fountain pens still have small edge over good gel pen, but that's significant only if you write a lot.
that may be the case for your particular writing style, but it is not universal.
i have a mild orthopaedic problem, and i found, in my twenties after years of struggling with disposable pens, that a fountain pen allowed me to write more lightly and fluidly on the page with the result that my words per minute more than doubled. my writing is still ugly, but it is vastly faster and a bit more legible.
fountain pens are not only for "decorative stuff" but have actual functional advantages due to their mechanical dynamics
I envision electrically charged ink, and opposing paper, so one only need approach the page with implement, and the ink flies upon it.
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> No, fountain pens have a "cool" factor and can be made for decorative stuff, but that's it.
I would not disagree more. A fountain pen writes with zero pressure. In contrast modern rollerballs and gel pens have a little spring to prevent contact leaking. Uni might have a patent on that. Famously Pilot's Hi-Techpoint pens doesn't have that and it stains the place where it touches.
A fountain pen can outlast any disposable pen, allows you to write 5x longer without any strain, promote better writing quality and writing habits, and lives with you and becomes tuned to your handwriting in a couple of months to a year.
Moreover, hand writing is better for your brain and concentration than typing on a glowing box which strains your eyes, hands and brain with constant distractions.
I agree with you - the low/no pressure that a fountain pen writes with is important. However, I will say that decent rollerballs (eg UniBall Vision) require only the weight of the pen itself, which means there is very little difference from fountain pens (but not none).
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Also, a fountain pen can be held at a smaller angle to the paper. Unlike the other kinds of pens, it even tends to write better that way. I find the smaller angle more comfortable to hold.
>becomes tuned to your handwriting
I didn't know that, what's the noticeable difference?
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I tried fountain pens for a bit back in grad school, but they honestly weren't great. They were imprecise, blobby, scritchy on the paper. Subscripts and superscripts would smear out. The best experience, IMHO, was a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil, but those smeared, so I eventually switched to pilot v5 or muji pens.
But that sounds like math, not cursive, you say? Well, yes, but there are paragraphs of thinking and doodling and argument in there with the math. My point is that fountain pens seem optimized for some kinds of writing, but certainly don't have a monopoly on all sorts of putting pen on paper.
Technical pens (staedtler) are great for math writing and quite precise (I studied engineering and used these a lot for notes with lots of formulas, diagrams, math notation etc), but the ink does take a bit to dry so it can be smeary particularly for left-handed use. They’re also a bit unforgiving with writing angles (likely not optimized for writing, for sure but they do work)
I we had the same here in the Netherlands. Never helped me one bit. I even had to go to after-school handwriting coaching. My handwriting is still horrible.
I think my main problem is that handwriting is so slow. I get impatient and rush it turning it into a mess. Reading it is also slow, even when written by someone with good handwriting it's a PITA to read cursive. I hope it dies out sooner rather than later.
I think the slowness is the point. I write in a journal as a way to collect my thought, get new ideas, focus my thinking. I’m always telling myself to slow down, because legibility and intelligence seem to both increase when I do so
I write almost exclusively with fountain pens, and it hasn't helped my handwriting at all. Not sure why you think it would help.
Well it's not magic, you still need to learn the skill of how to use the pen properly to write cursive.
My argument is simply that it's significantly easier to learn to have good handwriting with the right tool than with the wrong tool.
Surely there are also people with excellent handwriting even writing with sub-optimal tooling.
It does not really help my handwriting, but writing with a fountain pen is much more pleasant. I also like the objects, the ink bottles and the small refilling ritual every now and then. But yeah, my writing is still terrible.
That's probably because YOU use a cheap fountain pen. ;)
I use a cheap (£20) fountain pen it doesn't affect how good my writing is. That's practice not tools :)
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it seems there are two kinds of people
As I am mainly left-handed, I learned to like writing with a nice wooden pencil, like Faber-Castell, and a sharpener. Then, if it is something serious and if it is possible to use a felt pen, I use Staedtler or Faber-Castell felt pens in different sizes. I hate ballpoint pens.
Have you tried a good fountain pen? A good nib makes all the difference.
I'd like if you address the main point of his post: being left-handed.
I've never liked fountain pens because most languages are written left-to-right, which means you will get smudged much more easily than if you were right-handed.
The seemingly best advice I've seen is to learn how to be an "underwriter", aka position your hand north to where you're writing, instead of sideways. I say seemingly because I'm not willing to spend that amount in effort when I can write fine with pens.
The issue with being left handed, when writing a language that is written left-to-right, is the hand gets dragged over freshly written ink. A fountain pen has liquid ink that takes longer to dry than a ballpoint pen, it would make things significantly worse.
The thing about being left handed is your hand will naturally drag across the fresh ink of a fountain pen.
Fountain pen + left handed + left-to-right language is sadly a no go
> Write with FOUNTAIN PENS. Ideally on thicker paper, with something soft below (like more paper for example).
I love fountain pens. Well-made ones are elegant and feel good to write with. I love the look and feel of certain kinds of permanent black and blue-black ink that you can’t find for ballpoint.
They were extremely useful in dealing with hand cramps at a time I was doing a lot of mathy stuff for work (tens of pages of derivation a day for a while). They retrained my hand to not push on the page so hard and not grip the pen so hard. That eliminated most of the problem.
That said, they have had no effect on my handwriting. Which was bad-to-mediocre before and remains bad-to-mediocre now.
As an alternative, for people who dislike fountain pens -or stained hands-, I'd suggest a Tombow Fudenosuke marker pen. There're two variants, with a softer or harder tip, and there's a pack with both so it's easy to try both. The softer one produces a heavier result.
There are other brands, of course; Pentel has a similar marker and some other smaller brands too. I just think the Tombow is very nice and easy enough to find.
These pens are sort of the modern version of the Japanese calligraphy brush, so they're nice for writing but much more practical.
Any tips for lefties? I find in very difficult to avoid complete smudgification of everything I write with a fountain pen, since it takes so much longer for the ink to dry.
What I’ve seen being done before, not only by lefties but actually by quite a few people, is to shift your paper 45~90°, so that you’re effectively writing bottom up (right handed) or top to bottom (left handed). It can get a moment to get used to it but it alleviates the smudging significantly.
For what it’s worth, personally, I don’t like it so much, but I know people who swear by it; and had fast, clear, legible notes to back it up.
I write with my hand below the line to avoid smudging. A consequence of this is my pen meets the page at quite a shallow angle which I find is perfect for fountain pens but scratchy with ball points. These days I do very little hand writing and find my traditional pose (described above) causes hand cramps, but I don't know if that's specific to the odd way I write or if all poses would when so out of practice
Did you learn that handwriting pose already as a child? If not, how hard was it to teach yourself writing that way?
I recommend using a sheet of tissue, napkin or old school blotting paper under your writing hand.
This advice is not just for lefties. Although I'm right-handed myself, I like to use a tissue paper under my palm when scribing Wedding Cards, to avoid smudges.
Try writing right to left!
This is the kind of solution I'm looking for!
Should I:
- Write in mirror image form?
- Learn to predict my line length so I can write right to left, but have the text read left to right?
- Learn arabic or herbrew?
I'm leaning towards all three personally.
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Why not
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
Try different inks.
I disagree about the thicker paper part. It's the "sizing" of the paper that's important, that's the preparation of the paper that makes it more or less absorbent. Moleskine/Lechturn and similar notebooks have a sizing on the paper that makes it less absorbent and easier for a fountain pen to glide over. Printer paper is way more absorbent and creates more drag causing you to use more effort. Source: I use a cheapish but decent Lamy fountain pen on both kinds of paper, and I write cursive and shorthand for speed, but print for long term legibility.
Went through school in France too, was forced to use a fountain pen too, had my hands soaked in ink at the end of every day too. Except it never went away, and my handwriting is still awful.
Years of every teacher I had writing in red at the top of every test or homework "Applique-toi!", as if this injunction was all that was required for me to finally realize I had been holding the pen wrong for over 15 years. Fuck that, I'm glad it's over.
I will gladly celebrate the death of handwriting when it comes, that we may focus on more important matters and stop judging books by their covers.
I grade my university students' work with Herbin Violette Pensée ink and a Platinum Plaisir fountain pen. The symmetry of using a student's ink to grade students' work tickles me.
For other people who grade big stacks of papers, nota bene: fountain pens with a soft nib are a lifesaver! They require almost no writing pressure, which is so much more comfortable. You also get to use fun ink colors.
I picked up a fountain pen during lockdown out of sheer boredom and was shocked at how much better my handwriting looked
Tools definitely matter. If fountain pens just aren't practical or not your thing, modern pens like the uni jetstream are excellent as well.
Absolutely. Fountain pens are the way to go - with one I can write beautifully, with a BIC or Biro it’s a spidery mess.
Any suggestions on how to get into fountain pens? I handwrite a lot, but fountain pens have always intimidated me.
Get a pack of Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens. Just write with them, with no pressure. The cheapness and disposability means no reason to be intimidated. Then after you go through one pack of Varsities, buy a Pilot Metropolitan for about $20, and optionally a $10 piston-fill adapter and a bottle of ink. A Metropolitan is one of the cheapest "good enough" fountain pens.
In Poland you started with a pencil, but as you got more proficient you could switch to a fountain pen. I never did.
As a leftie I was forced to do exercised designed for "normal" children, that were just painful. Thinking about using "normal" scissors with my left hand makes me sad and angry almost 40 years later. But I do enjoy a nice fountain pen and a thick paper - it's relaxing.
I understand liking fountain pens for their "old school steam punk" factor, but I think recommending them to improve your cursive is a little nutty.
I love writing by hand, and for years I was looking for the ideal instrument. Frankly, all the big "pen enthusiast" websites gave awful advice IMO. I essentially wanted something with the tactile feel of a good pencil, but with the permanence of ink. Finally I stumbled across fine line markers at an arts supply store (I like the prismacolor ones but I'm sure there are others). They come in various widths (some as thin as a thin mechanical pencil), and they don't smudge, bleed, or need to be refilled. They have a great tactile feel and an extremely sharp, crisp line. I'll never understand why pen forums never seem to recommend them.
For handwriting in general, I would not recommend a fountain pen. For cursive in particular, though, sure. The soft, pressure-sensitive tip of a fountain pen is the only place where cursive really makes sense to me. With a ballpoint, felt-tip, or pencil, printing feels much more natural.
For what it's worth, I'm not a big proponent of fountain pens or cursive, but I do think they go hand-in-hand.