Terrible handwriting. Pen, pencil, whatever, it hurt to press in those shapes at those angles to make a clear mark. So the movements were jerky, so that at least I'd make it to the end of the...
Terrible handwriting. Pen, pencil, whatever, it hurt to press in those shapes at those angles to make a clear mark. So the movements were jerky, so that at least I'd make it to the end of the page. Years of practice, picking up and putting down cursive at the demand of whatever teacher. Cursive was easier by far, but still, you can only press so hard while loosely looping. And then one day I got a fountain pen. And suddenly it didn't hurt, suddenly the shapes came out how my hands had always wished. Went home for winter break, and came back to terrorize all my teachers with my new, tightly-spaced, and it was beautiful. Finally, writing a sentence didn't take a whole minute, could even rush through it and end up with something approaching readable. Of course the paper was cheap and splotched and my hands got spotted and soon I needed a backup, at least a small bottle of ink for midday refills, and suddenly losing or breaking a pen went from a momentary annoyance to an acute worry. Worth it still. They're not really relevant to most people's daily lives anymore, but fountain pens were the apex of writing utensils for a reason, and there's more tragedy than we give due to the loss of them in exchange for carbon copies.
Writing speed with common/cheap pens was a problem of mine back in university. Keeping up with the professor often seemed impossible, to the point that I didn’t have the mental room left over to...
Writing speed with common/cheap pens was a problem of mine back in university. Keeping up with the professor often seemed impossible, to the point that I didn’t have the mental room left over to edit down my writings only to the important parts of what they were saying due to being so behind, which further compounded the problem.
I’ve never tried a fountain pen and I don’t know how practical they’d be in a modern classroom setting, but I’ve often wished I could go back in time and get my hands on a laptop to use for notetaking those years, because I type so much faster than I write with your typical ballpoint pen.
i don't understand taking notes in pen. for the reasons you have been saying, as well as inability to easily fix errors and keep it readable. Pentel Twist-Erase mechanical pencil ftw.
i don't understand taking notes in pen. for the reasons you have been saying, as well as inability to easily fix errors and keep it readable.
I like using erasable pens; I remember things better when taking handwritten notes. Frixion pens are awesome. They also have great multicolor pens which made it quick and easy for me to switch...
I like using erasable pens; I remember things better when taking handwritten notes.
Frixion pens are awesome. They also have great multicolor pens which made it quick and easy for me to switch colours when taking notes.
Notes taken in-the-moment aren't something I ever expect to be error-free, and I rewrite any material I plan to study from as part of the process. A soft mechanical pencil doesn't cause any of the...
Notes taken in-the-moment aren't something I ever expect to be error-free, and I rewrite any material I plan to study from as part of the process. A soft mechanical pencil doesn't cause any of the issues I touched on above, but the constantly-shifting point on lead makes my handwriting incomprehensible at any reasonable speed.
As a lefty, I never believed there was a rational reason for forcing left-handed kids to write with their right hands. But then, I grew up with ballpoints. Fountain pens would be the reason!
As a lefty, I never believed there was a rational reason for forcing left-handed kids to write with their right hands. But then, I grew up with ballpoints. Fountain pens would be the reason!
My son is left handed, so I taught myself to write left handed to be able to teach him. In doing so, I spent a lot of time research how and it turns out there is actually a specific technique to...
My son is left handed, so I taught myself to write left handed to be able to teach him. In doing so, I spent a lot of time research how and it turns out there is actually a specific technique to left handed writing so you don't smear the page. The paper is a different angle to your hand. You grip the pencil differently, some of the letters are written slightly differently. And when my son went to school, none of that was taught to him, when he was doing hand writing his teacher tried to force him to use the bad techniques and I had to intervene and pointed to an actual left handed writing course saying he is writing that way since that was how I taught him to and it's an actual technique specific to lefties.
I now wonder if Arabic and Hebrew are traditionally written with the pen held in the left hand. As the other commenter said, fountain pens just create smudge for us southpaws.
I now wonder if Arabic and Hebrew are traditionally written with the pen held in the left hand. As the other commenter said, fountain pens just create smudge for us southpaws.
Apparently, they're still written with the right hand (which makes sense given most people (and mammals in general) are right handed), but they use a different technique where they keep their hand...
Apparently, they're still written with the right hand (which makes sense given most people (and mammals in general) are right handed), but they use a different technique where they keep their hand under the line they're writing. Chinese calligraphers get around the smudging by holding their pens vertically.
I actually just recently watched a short documentary about handedness in animals: SciShow - Octopuses Have a Favourite Arm And another about theories on why humans became mostly right handed in...
I actually just recently watched a short documentary about handedness in animals:
Fountain pens are great! I've been using a Lamy Safari for over a year at this point, and I can't imagine going back to ballpoints. Although I don't agree with the "ballpoint pen ink lasts longer"...
Fountain pens are great! I've been using a Lamy Safari for over a year at this point, and I can't imagine going back to ballpoints. Although I don't agree with the "ballpoint pen ink lasts longer" part - my experience is that by the time my fountain pen runs out of ink I could've used up two full ballpoint pens
I write with my left hand. Fountain pens are only great at getting ink all over me and producing an exciting range of illegible smudges where usually words would be. I use brush pens occasionally...
Fountain pens are great!
I write with my left hand. Fountain pens are only great at getting ink all over me and producing an exciting range of illegible smudges where usually words would be.
I use brush pens occasionally if I want to do fancy writing but mostly I don't write with my hands. 90% of the time I'm making marks on paper I'm using a pencil.
Left-handers unite. :'( I love writing with pens. I get so sad when I am excited to buy a new pen that has so much good feedback on the Internet, only to find it smears horribly due to being left...
Left-handers unite. :'(
I love writing with pens. I get so sad when I am excited to buy a new pen that has so much good feedback on the Internet, only to find it smears horribly due to being left handed. Now I explicitly check for left handed reviewers for pens.
My favorite pen is BIC Cristal. I haven't found anything I like more than it. I just looked it up any they now make a refillable version, I am hyped.
Uni-ball Jetstreams are my favourite for everyday inking. They come in a range of colours and tip sizes and I cannot, absolutely cannot, smudge them even if I try. Definitely worth a look if you...
Uni-ball Jetstreams are my favourite for everyday inking. They come in a range of colours and tip sizes and I cannot, absolutely cannot, smudge them even if I try. Definitely worth a look if you fancy a change, they're not expensive and available all over the place. My preference is the 0.7mm pink but there's plenty of options.
If I want to get fancy I use a Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen which takes a little care but only a little and it's very nice to use.
Leftie also. Not long ago, i spent a little while in a stationary store that allowed sampling all the loose pens, so I was able to find brands that flowed nicely and the ink didnt smudge. Landed...
Leftie also. Not long ago, i spent a little while in a stationary store that allowed sampling all the loose pens, so I was able to find brands that flowed nicely and the ink didnt smudge.
Landed on Zebra Sarasa, and Pilot hitechpoint V5. Ive heard the latter has a refill version but I havent tried it.
Not my experience at all. I have a couple fountain pens with smaller refillable cartridges and they get used up in a couple months, whereas gel pens can easily last more than a year. My main gripe...
Not my experience at all. I have a couple fountain pens with smaller refillable cartridges and they get used up in a couple months, whereas gel pens can easily last more than a year.
My main gripe with fountain pens is that the ink is water soluble so a droplet on a notebook makes all my writing go away, no matter how dry the ink is. Also its easy to get ink on your hands. I like writing on them but it is hard to justify the drawbacks over any reasonable quality ballpen.
My pain issue with fountain pens is the feel of the nib scratching against the paper. I'm sure enthusiasts will have recommendations with different "feels", but they're never going to be as smooth...
My pain issue with fountain pens is the feel of the nib scratching against the paper. I'm sure enthusiasts will have recommendations with different "feels", but they're never going to be as smooth as my preferred Pilot G-2 gel pen. Not to mention that with my habit of losing pens, it's economically probably unwise to spring for something more expensive.
Better paper will sort that issue out. I love love love Mnemosyne's paper but it is pretty pricey. Rhodia notebooks are super smooth though and very affordable. I never realised how low quality...
Better paper will sort that issue out. I love love love Mnemosyne's paper but it is pretty pricey. Rhodia notebooks are super smooth though and very affordable.
I never realised how low quality most paper is until I started using decent stuff.
Yeah see I don't really want to have to buy expensive paper for the writing experience to be pleasant. Especially with how I go through notebooks! I definitely have noticed different qualities of...
Yeah see I don't really want to have to buy expensive paper for the writing experience to be pleasant. Especially with how I go through notebooks! I definitely have noticed different qualities of paper even while using my gel pen but it feels smooth even on the cheap stuff.
I buy (relatively) expensive paper because it makes the writing experience so much more pleasant with any pens or pencils, not just one. I can't even use a fountain pen, and I mostly write in...
I buy (relatively) expensive paper because it makes the writing experience so much more pleasant with any pens or pencils, not just one. I can't even use a fountain pen, and I mostly write in pencil anyway (Tombow Mono 100 pencils ftw, screw Blackwings!)
I can't afford a lot of luxuries but decent paper and quality writing equipment is one I can indulge in. That and decent tea. Although plenty of my sketches are done on the backs of envelopes or random post-it notes.
Ah yeah I totally get that attitude towards some things. I similarly spend a lot more than strictly necessary on coffee (and coffee tools) and I get my cats super fancy wet food. I guess it's just...
Ah yeah I totally get that attitude towards some things. I similarly spend a lot more than strictly necessary on coffee (and coffee tools) and I get my cats super fancy wet food. I guess it's just a matter of which little luxuries are more important to which people! I don't really like the scratchy feeling of pencils on paper either so I bet the paper is a much bigger factor there than with a gel pen there too.
I write on fairly cheap paper and its fine for me. Do you push the fountain pen against the paper? The pen should be able to write even if barely touching the paper. Maybe the pen is dirty and...
I write on fairly cheap paper and its fine for me. Do you push the fountain pen against the paper? The pen should be able to write even if barely touching the paper. Maybe the pen is dirty and there is not enough ink flow?
Thinner nibs are more scratchy than the wider ones, but they should still work with little pressure.
I haven't really tried using a fountain pen for a few years now, since I didn't really enjoy the experience enough to want to invest in one -- my college roommate had them and was generally more...
I haven't really tried using a fountain pen for a few years now, since I didn't really enjoy the experience enough to want to invest in one -- my college roommate had them and was generally more aesthetic than me. Can't speak to any specifics of those pens unfortunately, I don't remember much other than generally disliking the writing experience.
In any case, I'm comfortable with my devotion to my favorite brand of gel pen. They're not too expensive and feel exactly how I want them to.
If you're getting too much scratching then either you're writing the wrong way, your pen sucks, or your ink isnt very lubricious. Or maybe you're just more sensitive to the scratching.
If you're getting too much scratching then either you're writing the wrong way, your pen sucks, or your ink isnt very lubricious.
Or maybe you're just more sensitive to the scratching.
yeah it's possible either I was writing the wrong way or I'm just more sensitive to the scratching (I also hate using pencils for the same reason). Gel pens have also given me a taste for that...
yeah it's possible either I was writing the wrong way or I'm just more sensitive to the scratching (I also hate using pencils for the same reason). Gel pens have also given me a taste for that ultra-smooth feel which probably doesn't help!
Not usually, unless it's a particularly "high maintenance" ink that needs distilled water or else it turns to sludge (Chou Kuro), or an ink known to be an extreme stainer and bleach solution is...
Not usually, unless it's a particularly "high maintenance" ink that needs distilled water or else it turns to sludge (Chou Kuro), or an ink known to be an extreme stainer and bleach solution is the only thing that works (Baystate Blue). Look into De Atramentis document inks, they can take longer to dry, but are highly water resistant for fountain pen inks.
Wow, really? Fountain pens do last a few months for me, but I don't think I ever had a ballpoint pen that lasted a year. Maybe I'm wrong though.
Not my experience at all. I have a couple fountain pens with smaller refillable cartridges and they get used up in a couple months, whereas gel pens can easily last more than a year.
Wow, really? Fountain pens do last a few months for me, but I don't think I ever had a ballpoint pen that lasted a year. Maybe I'm wrong though.
I'm a big fan of the other common entry level pen: the Pilot Metropolitan. It glides over paper even more smoothly than the Pilot and Uniball rollerball pens I otherwise prefer. (The ever-popular...
I'm a big fan of the other common entry level pen: the Pilot Metropolitan. It glides over paper even more smoothly than the Pilot and Uniball rollerball pens I otherwise prefer. (The ever-popular Pilot G2 is my minimum tier pen. They're reliable, but they don't effortlessly glide.)
Pilot also makes a wide range of fancy colored inks (the Iroshizuku line) if the regular black Namiki ink is too plain for you.
I had a rather unusual (I assume) and surprising (to me) journey with cursive. I'm a fast keyboard typist, and sometimes even opt for dictation now with models like Whisper, but I still have a...
I had a rather unusual (I assume) and surprising (to me) journey with cursive. I'm a fast keyboard typist, and sometimes even opt for dictation now with models like Whisper, but I still have a preference for handwriting, mainly because of the enhanced thinking process that comes with it.
I had and still have pretty bad handwriting, though it is decent when I take my time e.g. writing in cards/notes for others. My mom was rather strict with me, forcing me to drill writing/lettering when I was young, but it didn't help. I'm not sure what difference a pencil/graphite makes for quality. At one point I bought a good quality mid-range fountain pen, and although I enjoyed the feel of it, I was far too messy with the ink, especially when traveling with it.
Fast forward to me buying an iPad with a Pencil 2 and applying a matte/paper-like screen protector. I initially started with single-letter print handwriting, but somehow my hand would naturally want to go cursive, it just felt so much smoother and natural, and was actually much faster. It actually felt a lot like writing with a fountain pen in how low-effort and natural it felt. Not to mention one of the apps I use (Nebo) can convert even messy cursive handwriting to text, which can then be searched or exported etc.
I wonder if anyone else has had this experience and can compare to a fountain pen.
I had pretty similar experiences growing up and was told my handwriting was bad (I don't think it is, but that's me). I also enjoyed getting a good stylus/virtual pencil and writing with it, but I...
I had pretty similar experiences growing up and was told my handwriting was bad (I don't think it is, but that's me). I also enjoyed getting a good stylus/virtual pencil and writing with it, but I just don't write that much anymore to justify continuing to do it. But I did enjoy writing in cursive on a screen, it's a good feeling and I do prefer writing in cursive on paper when I have the choice.
Unfortunately, it was also drilled in me to write in all capitals (with oversized letters for capitals at the start of a sentence and smaller letters for the rest) to be more legible on formal documents as well as addressing mail. So I tend to write that way a lot without thinking about it, because it was always easier to default to writing one set of letter-shapes (ABCD) than having to switch back and forth between capitals and regular letters (Abcd). That's not something I worry about with cursive though, because it's all fluid and as you said, it feels very natural.
Rambling aside, I'm curious if you've ever tried writing in all capitals on a chalkboard/whiteboard or on a tablet and tested to see if it's convenient to you. Also curious if after trying all-caps whether the naturalness of cursive still prevails.
When I was a kid in the 90s, most of us preferred the ink pens to ball pens, the writing seemed to be way more elegant with that. Camlin and Chelpark were the biggest ink makers who supplied inks...
When I was a kid in the 90s, most of us preferred the ink pens to ball pens, the writing seemed to be way more elegant with that. Camlin and Chelpark were the biggest ink makers who supplied inks in small bottle, I don't know if those companies even exist today!
I've always regretted my poor handwriting and admired the very nice handwriting of my mother and father. Now that I think about it, I've probably never held a fountain pen in my life, although I...
I've always regretted my poor handwriting and admired the very nice handwriting of my mother and father. Now that I think about it, I've probably never held a fountain pen in my life, although I recognize absolutely how uncomfortable cheap ballpoint pens are. I have little reason to write physical notes anymore, though perhaps if I could make my writing truly beautiful, I would find occasions to do it more often.
It's never too late to learn new things 😊 I've been thinking about it myself a lot. I was taught cursive in school but haven't truly used it in probably 15+ years - there are a lot of tools both...
It's never too late to learn new things 😊
I've been thinking about it myself a lot. I was taught cursive in school but haven't truly used it in probably 15+ years - there are a lot of tools both online and from hobby shops though, so I think it would be pretty accessible to pick back up and relearn.
It needs practice. I've been taught cursive writing with a fountain pen in elementary school. Turns out, my handwriting is just bad regardless of the pen I use.
It needs practice. I've been taught cursive writing with a fountain pen in elementary school. Turns out, my handwriting is just bad regardless of the pen I use.
To me, learning cursive was about learning to write quickly without lifting the pen. My current handwriting is most definitely not the cursive I was taught in school, but I write it quickly with...
To me, learning cursive was about learning to write quickly without lifting the pen. My current handwriting is most definitely not the cursive I was taught in school, but I write it quickly with connecting letters, and so I consider it “cursive”
Terrible handwriting. Pen, pencil, whatever, it hurt to press in those shapes at those angles to make a clear mark. So the movements were jerky, so that at least I'd make it to the end of the page. Years of practice, picking up and putting down cursive at the demand of whatever teacher. Cursive was easier by far, but still, you can only press so hard while loosely looping. And then one day I got a fountain pen. And suddenly it didn't hurt, suddenly the shapes came out how my hands had always wished. Went home for winter break, and came back to terrorize all my teachers with my new, tightly-spaced, and it was beautiful. Finally, writing a sentence didn't take a whole minute, could even rush through it and end up with something approaching readable. Of course the paper was cheap and splotched and my hands got spotted and soon I needed a backup, at least a small bottle of ink for midday refills, and suddenly losing or breaking a pen went from a momentary annoyance to an acute worry. Worth it still. They're not really relevant to most people's daily lives anymore, but fountain pens were the apex of writing utensils for a reason, and there's more tragedy than we give due to the loss of them in exchange for carbon copies.
Writing speed with common/cheap pens was a problem of mine back in university. Keeping up with the professor often seemed impossible, to the point that I didn’t have the mental room left over to edit down my writings only to the important parts of what they were saying due to being so behind, which further compounded the problem.
I’ve never tried a fountain pen and I don’t know how practical they’d be in a modern classroom setting, but I’ve often wished I could go back in time and get my hands on a laptop to use for notetaking those years, because I type so much faster than I write with your typical ballpoint pen.
i don't understand taking notes in pen. for the reasons you have been saying, as well as inability to easily fix errors and keep it readable.
Pentel Twist-Erase mechanical pencil ftw.
I'm a major fan of double-knock mechanical pencils. They are the best for pocket carrying.
I like using erasable pens; I remember things better when taking handwritten notes.
Frixion pens are awesome. They also have great multicolor pens which made it quick and easy for me to switch colours when taking notes.
Notes taken in-the-moment aren't something I ever expect to be error-free, and I rewrite any material I plan to study from as part of the process. A soft mechanical pencil doesn't cause any of the issues I touched on above, but the constantly-shifting point on lead makes my handwriting incomprehensible at any reasonable speed.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/cFkzq
As a lefty, I never believed there was a rational reason for forcing left-handed kids to write with their right hands. But then, I grew up with ballpoints. Fountain pens would be the reason!
My son is left handed, so I taught myself to write left handed to be able to teach him. In doing so, I spent a lot of time research how and it turns out there is actually a specific technique to left handed writing so you don't smear the page. The paper is a different angle to your hand. You grip the pencil differently, some of the letters are written slightly differently. And when my son went to school, none of that was taught to him, when he was doing hand writing his teacher tried to force him to use the bad techniques and I had to intervene and pointed to an actual left handed writing course saying he is writing that way since that was how I taught him to and it's an actual technique specific to lefties.
Kudos for supporting your kid! Could you please share resources on this technique?
https://www.lwtears.com/blog/left-handed-handwriting-tips-guide
https://www.nhsggc.org.uk/kids/resources/ot-activityinformation-sheets/handwriting-advice-for-left-handers/
Thank you, looking through this for my students and my son.
I now wonder if Arabic and Hebrew are traditionally written with the pen held in the left hand. As the other commenter said, fountain pens just create smudge for us southpaws.
Apparently, they're still written with the right hand (which makes sense given most people (and mammals in general) are right handed), but they use a different technique where they keep their hand under the line they're writing. Chinese calligraphers get around the smudging by holding their pens vertically.
I'm now curious which species are the natural southpaws.
Apparently 66% of orangutans are lefties.
I actually just recently watched a short documentary about handedness in animals:
SciShow - Octopuses Have a Favourite Arm
And another about theories on why humans became mostly right handed in the first place:
PBS Eons - How Humans Became (Mostly) Right Handed
Both channels highly recommended!
Fountain pens are great! I've been using a Lamy Safari for over a year at this point, and I can't imagine going back to ballpoints. Although I don't agree with the "ballpoint pen ink lasts longer" part - my experience is that by the time my fountain pen runs out of ink I could've used up two full ballpoint pens
I write with my left hand. Fountain pens are only great at getting ink all over me and producing an exciting range of illegible smudges where usually words would be.
I use brush pens occasionally if I want to do fancy writing but mostly I don't write with my hands. 90% of the time I'm making marks on paper I'm using a pencil.
Left-handers unite. :'(
I love writing with pens. I get so sad when I am excited to buy a new pen that has so much good feedback on the Internet, only to find it smears horribly due to being left handed. Now I explicitly check for left handed reviewers for pens.
My favorite pen is BIC Cristal. I haven't found anything I like more than it. I just looked it up any they now make a refillable version, I am hyped.
Uni-ball Jetstreams are my favourite for everyday inking. They come in a range of colours and tip sizes and I cannot, absolutely cannot, smudge them even if I try. Definitely worth a look if you fancy a change, they're not expensive and available all over the place. My preference is the 0.7mm pink but there's plenty of options.
If I want to get fancy I use a Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen which takes a little care but only a little and it's very nice to use.
Leftie also. Not long ago, i spent a little while in a stationary store that allowed sampling all the loose pens, so I was able to find brands that flowed nicely and the ink didnt smudge.
Landed on Zebra Sarasa, and Pilot hitechpoint V5. Ive heard the latter has a refill version but I havent tried it.
Not my experience at all. I have a couple fountain pens with smaller refillable cartridges and they get used up in a couple months, whereas gel pens can easily last more than a year.
My main gripe with fountain pens is that the ink is water soluble so a droplet on a notebook makes all my writing go away, no matter how dry the ink is. Also its easy to get ink on your hands. I like writing on them but it is hard to justify the drawbacks over any reasonable quality ballpen.
My pain issue with fountain pens is the feel of the nib scratching against the paper. I'm sure enthusiasts will have recommendations with different "feels", but they're never going to be as smooth as my preferred Pilot G-2 gel pen. Not to mention that with my habit of losing pens, it's economically probably unwise to spring for something more expensive.
Better paper will sort that issue out. I love love love Mnemosyne's paper but it is pretty pricey. Rhodia notebooks are super smooth though and very affordable.
I never realised how low quality most paper is until I started using decent stuff.
Yeah see I don't really want to have to buy expensive paper for the writing experience to be pleasant. Especially with how I go through notebooks! I definitely have noticed different qualities of paper even while using my gel pen but it feels smooth even on the cheap stuff.
I buy (relatively) expensive paper because it makes the writing experience so much more pleasant with any pens or pencils, not just one. I can't even use a fountain pen, and I mostly write in pencil anyway (Tombow Mono 100 pencils ftw, screw Blackwings!)
I can't afford a lot of luxuries but decent paper and quality writing equipment is one I can indulge in. That and decent tea. Although plenty of my sketches are done on the backs of envelopes or random post-it notes.
Ah yeah I totally get that attitude towards some things. I similarly spend a lot more than strictly necessary on coffee (and coffee tools) and I get my cats super fancy wet food. I guess it's just a matter of which little luxuries are more important to which people! I don't really like the scratchy feeling of pencils on paper either so I bet the paper is a much bigger factor there than with a gel pen there too.
I write on fairly cheap paper and its fine for me. Do you push the fountain pen against the paper? The pen should be able to write even if barely touching the paper. Maybe the pen is dirty and there is not enough ink flow?
Thinner nibs are more scratchy than the wider ones, but they should still work with little pressure.
I haven't really tried using a fountain pen for a few years now, since I didn't really enjoy the experience enough to want to invest in one -- my college roommate had them and was generally more aesthetic than me. Can't speak to any specifics of those pens unfortunately, I don't remember much other than generally disliking the writing experience.
In any case, I'm comfortable with my devotion to my favorite brand of gel pen. They're not too expensive and feel exactly how I want them to.
If you're getting too much scratching then either you're writing the wrong way, your pen sucks, or your ink isnt very lubricious.
Or maybe you're just more sensitive to the scratching.
yeah it's possible either I was writing the wrong way or I'm just more sensitive to the scratching (I also hate using pencils for the same reason). Gel pens have also given me a taste for that ultra-smooth feel which probably doesn't help!
You can get non-soluble fountain pen ink.
I didn't know that! Do you need anything special to clean the ink from the pen?
Not usually, unless it's a particularly "high maintenance" ink that needs distilled water or else it turns to sludge (Chou Kuro), or an ink known to be an extreme stainer and bleach solution is the only thing that works (Baystate Blue). Look into De Atramentis document inks, they can take longer to dry, but are highly water resistant for fountain pen inks.
Wow, really? Fountain pens do last a few months for me, but I don't think I ever had a ballpoint pen that lasted a year. Maybe I'm wrong though.
I'm a big fan of the other common entry level pen: the Pilot Metropolitan. It glides over paper even more smoothly than the Pilot and Uniball rollerball pens I otherwise prefer. (The ever-popular Pilot G2 is my minimum tier pen. They're reliable, but they don't effortlessly glide.)
Pilot also makes a wide range of fancy colored inks (the Iroshizuku line) if the regular black Namiki ink is too plain for you.
I had a rather unusual (I assume) and surprising (to me) journey with cursive. I'm a fast keyboard typist, and sometimes even opt for dictation now with models like Whisper, but I still have a preference for handwriting, mainly because of the enhanced thinking process that comes with it.
I had and still have pretty bad handwriting, though it is decent when I take my time e.g. writing in cards/notes for others. My mom was rather strict with me, forcing me to drill writing/lettering when I was young, but it didn't help. I'm not sure what difference a pencil/graphite makes for quality. At one point I bought a good quality mid-range fountain pen, and although I enjoyed the feel of it, I was far too messy with the ink, especially when traveling with it.
Fast forward to me buying an iPad with a Pencil 2 and applying a matte/paper-like screen protector. I initially started with single-letter print handwriting, but somehow my hand would naturally want to go cursive, it just felt so much smoother and natural, and was actually much faster. It actually felt a lot like writing with a fountain pen in how low-effort and natural it felt. Not to mention one of the apps I use (Nebo) can convert even messy cursive handwriting to text, which can then be searched or exported etc.
I wonder if anyone else has had this experience and can compare to a fountain pen.
I had pretty similar experiences growing up and was told my handwriting was bad (I don't think it is, but that's me). I also enjoyed getting a good stylus/virtual pencil and writing with it, but I just don't write that much anymore to justify continuing to do it. But I did enjoy writing in cursive on a screen, it's a good feeling and I do prefer writing in cursive on paper when I have the choice.
Unfortunately, it was also drilled in me to write in all capitals (with oversized letters for capitals at the start of a sentence and smaller letters for the rest) to be more legible on formal documents as well as addressing mail. So I tend to write that way a lot without thinking about it, because it was always easier to default to writing one set of letter-shapes (ABCD) than having to switch back and forth between capitals and regular letters (Abcd). That's not something I worry about with cursive though, because it's all fluid and as you said, it feels very natural.
Rambling aside, I'm curious if you've ever tried writing in all capitals on a chalkboard/whiteboard or on a tablet and tested to see if it's convenient to you. Also curious if after trying all-caps whether the naturalness of cursive still prevails.
When I was a kid in the 90s, most of us preferred the ink pens to ball pens, the writing seemed to be way more elegant with that. Camlin and Chelpark were the biggest ink makers who supplied inks in small bottle, I don't know if those companies even exist today!
I've always regretted my poor handwriting and admired the very nice handwriting of my mother and father. Now that I think about it, I've probably never held a fountain pen in my life, although I recognize absolutely how uncomfortable cheap ballpoint pens are. I have little reason to write physical notes anymore, though perhaps if I could make my writing truly beautiful, I would find occasions to do it more often.
It's never too late to learn new things 😊
I've been thinking about it myself a lot. I was taught cursive in school but haven't truly used it in probably 15+ years - there are a lot of tools both online and from hobby shops though, so I think it would be pretty accessible to pick back up and relearn.
It needs practice. I've been taught cursive writing with a fountain pen in elementary school. Turns out, my handwriting is just bad regardless of the pen I use.
To me, learning cursive was about learning to write quickly without lifting the pen. My current handwriting is most definitely not the cursive I was taught in school, but I write it quickly with connecting letters, and so I consider it “cursive”
This explains why my handwriting is barely legible chicken scrawl...or calligraphy, there is no in-between.