choice of pen nib and handwriting style

[Kees]

Too bad “I use a non-Italic nib and a depraved conventional ("school") cursive” isn’t on the list.

 

I think that’s the way it usually goes: you start to write as you were taught to do, and gradually you develop the idiosyncrasies which give your handwriting “personality”. On the one hand, this is an eclectic process; sometimes it will be possible for you to say “I took this letter from him/her, because I liked it so much”, but more often you won’t be able to tell. The other factor is sheer negligence: in trying to increase the speed of writing, certain elements get lost or assume an abstract quality. This is also very individual.

[grasshopper]

  Kees said:

Too bad “I use a non-Italic nib and a depraved conventional ("school") cursive” isn’t on the list.

I would have voted that for myself too.

 

Trouble is, I can't remember what style we learnt in school. I tried to surf for some info for a while but can't seem to find anything that will jog my memory. I think it's a hybrid of some sort anyway - school, conventional, I'm not sure. It definitely requires CIA-level deciphering, whatever it is. When I get my hands on a decent colour scanner, I'll post a pic and ask the handwriting experts to help me out (if they can read it, of course).

 

With regards to the option above, I went for the "I use a non-Italic nib & a hybrid of printing/"school" cursive", which sounds about right so far. I've just started with a 0.9 Italic, and I quite like it, so my vote might change in the future.

[freecia]

I've noticed that many people in my field (software) print or scrawl in a cur-int (between cursive and printing) so that I need to squint and guess what they're writing.

 

The most legible handwriting in my field is print. Rarely do I see the gorgeous cursive I see here. Most of the time I see cur-int or print-sive, some 20% illegible handwriting.

I guess you could call it italic, but italic implies legibility to me.

 

Now an interesting poll would be our favorite fonts I like Tahoma and Arial. Not too big on serifs either. Somehow this ties into how much I like Lamy, Rotring, and other modern-style pens.

Edited August 12, 2005 by freecia

[KateGladstone]

  corienb said:

I think I fit none of the above descriptions, I adjust my writing style to the nib I use..

Copperplate-like with a flex nib, italic-like with an italic or stub nib.. and ..well not sure what to call it, with a normal nib ( mostly B ).

 

 

http://www.bennink.info/pens/corien1.jpg

To me, Corien's handwriting looks like circle/vertical printing with some Italic joins.

[KateGladstone]

  freecia said:

I've noticed that many people in my field (software) print or scrawl in a cur-int (between cursive and printing) so that I need to squint and guess what they're writing.

 

The most legible handwriting in my field is print. Rarely do I see the gorgeous cursive I see here. Most of the time I see cur-int or print-sive, some 20% illegible handwriting.

I guess you could call it italic, but italic implies legibility to me.

 

Now an interesting poll would be our favorite fonts I like Tahoma and Arial. Not too big on serifs either. Somehow this ties into how much I like Lamy, Rotring, and other modern-style pens.

Freecia notes:

 

" ... many people in my field (software) print or scrawl in a cur-int (between cursive and printing) so that I need to squint and guess what they're writing."

 

I increasingly find myself calling *legible* combinations of print & cursive styles (which often look like Italic) the "current" hand or the "currently developing" style ("current" in the dual sense of "rapid" and "now common") which comes close to Freecia's term "cur-int."

For *illegible* combinations of print & cursive (which bring a squint to the eyes and guesswork to the brain) - well, I think of these as "attempts at the newly prevailing 'current' style."

 

"Italic implies legibility" - usually, yes, but poor Italic does exist (and always has) even though poor writing appears far more rarely in Italic than in other styles given equal teaching/practice.

[Mary P]

I use a stub or italic nib and round nib almost equally. My "normal" handwriting combines elements of Palmer method with some Spencerian forms. I'm a 50 something graduate of parochial schools. Daily penmanship classes were part of my school days. My Gran had also been a teacher. I learned cursive writing before I started school. I never really have learned how to print.

[Velma]

  Kees said:

Too bad “I use a non-Italic nib and a depraved conventional ("school") cursive” isn’t on the list.

 

I think that’s the way it usually goes: you start to write as you were taught to do, and gradually you develop the idiosyncrasies which give your handwriting “personality”. On the one hand, this is an eclectic process; sometimes it will be possible for you to say “I took this letter from him/her, because I liked it so much”, but more often you won’t be able to tell. The other factor is sheer negligence: in trying to increase the speed of writing, certain elements get lost or assume an abstract quality. This is also very individual.

You're very right. My style is cribbed from here and there, and I suspect it shows (frankenwriting?), but it's fairly aesthetically pleasing. Still, I can remember precisely where I picked up certain letter forms: my lower case "e," for example, comes from both The Borrowers and the calligraphy on an early Neil Diamond album. And I've tried to adapt some letters and given them up as unsuccessful styles.

[inkyfingers]

Usually I write with a plain old fine or medium gold nib. Recently I've ordered a medium cursive italic from Binder and hopefully I'll get it in the mail today. I'm cautiously optimistic that it'll give me that extra "flair" I'm looking for.

[Centurion]

  Leslie J. said:

I generally use stub nibs because of my high angle of attack relative to the paper. I am strictly boring old Palmer schoolgirl cursive. It is so ingrained in me, I don't know how to get more flair to my writing. Sometimes an italic nib will give me more flair.

yeah, I know what you mean. I try to get some flair going

[Centurion]

  Anne-Sophie said:

I only use plain nib, they need to be medium or bold and very smooth and wet.

 

I consider fine and custom nibs scratchy, I tried them thinking they would help my huge

handwriting but they bug me to no end.

 

My "ideal" handwriting would be the one that Denis Richard shows in the post about Seyes paper ruling.

 

Unfortunately, when I am trying to keep up with my thoughts some unsightly printing pops out especially with r, s and p's. It's a constant battle to keep my nice French cursive.

Me too, like smooth, springy and wet. I like wet for the extra lub, but annoying waiting for the ink to dry. I suppose I am not yet brave enough to go for an italic or stub since I heard they are a bit more difficult to write with smoothly and that they are inherently not as smooth as regular round nibs in M and B. I like the feel of B but often it's just too wide for everyday writing so M is a good compromise for me. F would be even better for everyday writing, but I am willing to sacrifice that for extra smoothness in a M.

[Larry T]

Good morning all. I use standard fine nibs because I tend to write small. I actually had pretty decent handwriting in school, but when I went to college, I had to write fast to keep up with the professors. My handwriting has never been the same since.

[Slush99]

I'm not sure. I mostly print. I prefer medium to broad nibs, but I might decide to try out a fine or XF. I actually scribble when I'm in a hurry. I hope my snailers can read my writing.

[Goodwhiskers]

I have my own slight twist on California public school cursive, which I modified slightly again after looking through Kate Gladstone's delightful website in 2003 and 2004.

 

I use a rounded nib, not a stub or italic nib, because I want smoothness and I have too many other projects going on which don't allow me time to learn that beautiful chancery italic script.

 

My result isn't the italic or almost-italic form she advocates, but it's better than what I used to do. I can produce it consistently, clearly and quickly now, and even better with a fountain pen. I can also produce it quickly and well on a whiteboard.

 

Recently, some of my adult ESL students from East Asia have asked how to learn my whiteboard cursive! I point them to "American Handwriting: Slow and Easy," from Delta Publishing, which teaches more or less the same as what California public schools teach (the ones that still teach it), and I tell them to develop their own style (as long as it's still legible to literate native speakers) after mastering that one.

 

I connect every letter within a word, except after some uppercase initial letters.

 

I keep my uppercase letters as close to the block/printed form as smoothly possible, most of the time. For uppercase "I," I freely alternate between the block form and the stylized non-descending-J form. I switched to a connecting block form of uppercase gee in junior high or high school, because the uppercase California public school cursive gee always felt crazy to me.

 

In lowercase,

my eff and ell have loops,

the descenders of my gee and wye have loops,

the ascenders of my bee, dee and tee do not have loops,

I finish my bee off at its bottom,

I try to make the loop of my ee look slanted or horizontal rather than vertical,

my ess is the connected version of the block/printing style of the letter,

and my zee (zed outside the USA) now looks more like the block/printing style with a looped descender.

 

I'm still experimenting with arr, now trying the California public school cursive form with a bow toward the left on the last downstroke; this makes the whole thing look more like a shrunken uppercase arr, and that feels very reasonable.

 

California public school cursive lowercase bee, ee, arr, ess and zee always seemed too crazily and arbitrarily different from the block/printing forms of the letters to me, although I obediently produced them until 2003 and 2004. Thank you, Kate Gladstone!

 

(Edited: toned down the parenthetical comment about the name of zee/zed.)

Edited December 7, 2005 by Goodwhiskers

[FrankB]

I learned the Peterson Penmanship method of cursive when I was in the second grade, many moons ago. Peterson and Palmer are nearly identical. I could never, never, write legibly with that method. I hated to write, and I avoided it as much as I could - which was hard in pre computer days. I relearned how to write in my mid-20's, and I learned an italic style. To this day, if I try to use the cursive I learned in grade schol, it is like an evil retrogression to a scrawl that looks like a child's attempt at writing.

 

Hence, I use italic writing with some printing. I use mostly italic or stub nibs, but I have some lovely standard ball nibs that I do not hesitate to use, but still with my italic hand. When I must use a pencil or a ball point, I retain my italic style.

 

With my italic hand, writing is fun and I tend to write more because I enjoy it. I often wonder when I see the horrid penmanship of so many young people whether they might also come to enjoy writing more if they had been taught alternate writing styles. I remain absolutely incredulous that the Peterson Method is still taught in the local area schools.

[Sonnet]

What does the Peterson method look like?

[FrankB]

Sonnet, as I indicated in my narrative, it is nearly identical to the Palmer Method. Both methods are little more than adaptations of "business writing." I regret I do not have the technical ability to post any examples. With luck, one of our compadres might post samples.

[PaulK]

Here's an example of my writing....just started working on the Christmas letter....

 

My best to all (and Merry Christmas since you're viewing the first -- draft? -- page of my letter)... /:) \

 

Paul

Edited December 11, 2005 by PaulK

[FrankB]

Kate, thank you for this thread. It has facilitated my rethinking my approach to the Peterson Method. Until this thread, I had honestly never even considered trying a hybrid approach to cursive writing - and this from a guy who has use fountain pens for 40+ years! Duh!

 

There are certain letters I just cannot execute in Peterson or Palmer, like the pronoun "I." No matter how I approach that pronoun, the "I" comes out looking like I am a crazed 8-year old Dr. Jeckel. By simply using an italic "I," the whole character of a sentence changes. Likewise, using italic "r's" and "s's," and forming my "a's" and "o's" in italic fashion, gives the product on paper a pleasing character it otherwise would lack, and it is legible.

 

I am going to continue playing with this new toy. Thanks again.

[memphislawyer]

this is an interesting topic as i have one on how to improve myself going. frank's experience has me now doubting whether i should first learn the fountain pen by improving my non-existent cursive, and then going to a chancery italic.

 

i take notes in court and i tend to write fast and sloppy. with this first day of fountain pen, i have tried to slow down. my print is getting better just by slowing down, i mean half as fast as my note taking, and my cursive which i never use still sucks.

 

frank makes a good point of forgetting cursive, learning to print using some italic characters and then i just practice mr. pickering's lettering. but then i see that copperplate cursive writing and maybe that is easier to learn

 

i obtained from pam a charleston waterman and some waterman florida blue ink. it dries fast and the pen does not put out a lot of ink, which i think are good characteristics for a newbie, or maybe just me, to practice.

 

i dont know how to do polls, but maybe someone could do one about how a newbie should start, say practice non-existent cursive and move to italic fonts, or go straight to italics or whatever. or maybe, and i dont mean to hijack this thread, append to this?

 

sam

[wimg]

Hi Sam,

 

I think I replied to a similar question in another thread. If you really are planning on taking notes fast, there are only two ways.

 

One is to learn shorthand, and use that. Disadvantage is that it is unreadbale most of the time, except to yourself, and even then if you don't convert it fast enough to readable script or a digital doc, you may not be able to read it back yourself after a while.

 

The other option is to learn cursive. And use that for speedy note-taking. Teh whole idea of cursive script is that you don't need to take the pen off the paper except for dotting i-s and crossing t-s and moving from one word to another. Hence it is faster than any other form of "standard" writing. Since a fountain pen in principle glides more easily over paper than a bp or similar, the fastest way to do make plain English notes (or any other western alphabet type language), which are readbale way after the fact, is to use a fountain pen and cursive script.

 

Now use a permanet ink, and it won't fade or wash away either .

 

Just to give you an example: changing from bp to fp I improved my cursive writing speed in exam mode, medium sized script, from about 3-4 A4-pages an hour, to > 7 of those pages an hour, whereas I can't sustain the bp writing speed continuously, because my hand and arm start cramping badly. No such problems with a fountain pen.

 

Now, if you just want to make notes: I can keep up with a normal speaker, or a medium fast speaker, provide he stops occasionally to think or breathe. Of course, in this case I would not be able to partake in any discussions.

 

Of course, YMMV, but I don't think you can't obtain and attain these speeds by printing and/or using any calligraphic script, certainly not for long periods of time.

 

This is why I suggested the route of cursive first and calligraphy next, although you could practice both. Practicing calligraphy will have an effect on cursive handwriting as well: it tends to become neater.

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim