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I'm fairly new to the world of fountain pens, and would like some advice on the topic of an italic nib. A little background first. I studied calligraphy and italic handwriting quite intensely about 30 years ago from an artist Benedectine Nun, who is now deceased. I completely changed my handwriting from the old Palmer to Italic, which I continue to use. Eventuallly, I even went on to teach a course in college on beginning calligraphy. After 20 some years, I have rediscovered my old artistic interest in fountain pens, calligraphy, and italic. I have 3 old Osmiroid pens (two 65s and one 75) I have all the nibs from extra fine up through B4. All the nibs and pens work fine after 30 years. I've recently purchased some beginning Fountain pens: Pilot Metropolitan, TWSBI ECO, Lamy Safari, and the Pilot E95S....all with either fine or extra-fine nibs. Now I'm thinking of investing in a good italic cursive nib. I've been re-learning to write with my old Osmiroids. I guess my main question at this point is: would getting a specially ground cursive italic nib produce a better writing pen than my old Osmiroids? I know there are places that will grind nibs for you. I have discovered Marc Bacas at Nibgrinder.com. I'm debating whether I should purchase a pen from him, and have him grind a cursive italic for me. Would a custom ground pen like this work better, more smoothly than my old plastic Osmiroid? Or is the Osmiroid considered a pretty good writing pen? And then there is the question: if I do decide to have him produce a nib for me...there are so many nib options: JoWo, Bock, gold, amongst others. He makes 3 different italic nibs...one for formal italic, one regular cursive italic, and a very smooth cursive italic. I'm thinking I want something along the lines of a fine nib. (something between the Osmiroid extra fine and fine.) I see that I can send pens in. Waiting time is 2 months. Or if I purchase a pen from him, it is expedited. He mostly stocks TWSBI pens. Any thoughts you can share with me on this topic would be appreciated. I know there are other options also. I've heard of Franklin-Christoph nibs. And Goulet Pens also sells some italic nibs. Or I could get a Jinhao and experiment on grinding my own. Don't know how tough that is. Just not sure what I should do and would love any input from anyone. Thanks. Dan Mueller

I have been working with my italic cursive handwriting and have discovered an odd little issue. I can not find a convincing lower case "z" that works well in the middle of letters. The standard z does not work at all with connectors and looks odd in the middle of otherwise flowing italic letters. The Palmer cursive z works with the flow, but looks completely out of place. Any words with double Zs are even worse (frizz, pizza, etc.). I need something else. Obviously this is not a frequently occurring problem, but you try to write lizard, pizza, or citizen in italic cursive without it looking odd. Any help that could be provided would be greatly appreciated.