I am interested in why people don’t change their handwriting to accompany their nib size.

[samasry]

On 6/20/2021 at 1:55 PM, Arkanabar said:

@samasry -- try a low-intensity IG blue-black, such as R&K Salix.  That ought to reduce feathering.

 

Thank you for the pointer

[Mech-for-i]

You want to find a tool that suite your need, not bending your need to a tool or the tool's limitation

[Bo Bo Olson]

Samasry, you have a lot of paper experience. I should copy it to avoid trouble papers.

 

I thought Hammermill made Oxford Optic 90g the same paper that is in the Red&Black notebook.

I have spiral notebooks of Optic and am quite happy with it....am glad to find it, in my area of Germany it is scarce. Clairfontaine Veloute is it's equal also in cost and I know where it is sold.

 

OK, I'm real old fashioned about paying postal charges; so like to buy by hand. Which isn't always possible.

 

 

[samasry]

26 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Samasry, you have a lot of paper experience. I should copy it to avoid trouble papers.

 

I thought Hammermill made Oxford Optic 90g the same paper that is in the Red&Black notebook.

I have spiral notebooks of Optic and am quite happy with it....am glad to find it, in my area of Germany it is scarce. Clairfontaine Veloute is it's equal also in cost and I know where it is sold.

 

OK, I'm real old fashioned about paying postal charges; so like to buy by hand. Which isn't always possible.

 

 

 

I buy Red&Black notebooks with  optik-paper  for my daughter  and she loves them.  I, on the other hand, am a peasant, I can not use  fancy notebooks like these, mainly because my consumption rate is pretty  high and I don't typically want to keep the written pages for long. Hence my use model,  works best with 500 sheet reams that are reasonable in terms of price. 

 

If I am not mistaken,  Hamelin is the paper source for Oxford optik-paper notebooks, as well as  optik-paper in general, and not Hammermill,  please correct me if I am wrong.

 

I have noticed that people who are based in Europe have much wider selection of good papers at very good price.

Usually we do not have these options in the US at good price or at all, unless you import from Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

24 minutes ago, samasry said:

If I am not mistaken,  Hamelin is the paper source for Oxford optik-paper notebooks, as well as  optik-paper in general, and not Hammermill,  please correct me if I am wrong

You are I think right, Ham=Ham when one is not in GB, and have it all over the place.....and dredges up mud from ancient memory.

 

I wouldn't dream of spending that much real money for a Red&Black notebook**, but do like the common 11 1/2 x 8 1/2" spiral notebook.

I'm retired so don't need something like a Red&Black notebook.

 

Ikea use to give us a nice bound office notebook every year to those who needed one for work, and back then I was a Ball Point Barbarian like most....so have no idea what sort of paper was in it...worked fine with a ball point. And seeing even the store bosses used cheap plastic free Ikea ball points it didn't matter.

 

The non-tie wearing Bosses were Du***/ (informal you..which is a bigger thing in German than in English or Swedish.)....like the Swedes, unlike other German companies....so used the cheap ball point so they didn't look down the nose....or couldn't be accused of it.

 

*** Back when Ingvar Kamprad was still alive and the 3rd richest man in Europe. He came to inspect our store, walking the whole store,  talked to many of us. Just like a normal down to earth  billionaire. I du'ed him, like everyone else. So if you Du the Big Boss, everyone got du'ed.

 

 

[samasry]

1 hour ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

You are I think right, Ham=Ham when one is not in GB, and have it all over the place.....and dredges up mud from ancient memory.

 

I wouldn't dream of spending that much real money for a Red&Black notebook**, but do like the common 11 1/2 x 8 1/2" spiral notebook.

I'm retired so don't need something like a Red&Black notebook.

 

Ikea use to give us a nice bound office notebook every year to those who needed one for work, and back then I was a Ball Point Barbarian like most....so have no idea what sort of paper was in it...worked fine with a ball point. And seeing even the store bosses used cheap plastic free Ikea ball points it didn't matter.

 

The non-tie wearing Bosses were Du***/ (informal you..which is a bigger thing in German than in English or Swedish.)....like the Swedes, unlike other German companies....so used the cheap ball point so they didn't look down the nose....or couldn't be accused of it.

 

*** Back when Ingvar Kamprad was still alive and the 3rd richest man in Europe. He came to inspect our store, walking the whole store,  talked to many of us. Just like a normal down to earth  billionaire. I du'ed him, like everyone else. So if you Du the Big Boss, everyone got du'ed.

 

 

 

Sie sind richtig

 

I have studied German for couple of years in middle school and I remember well  that  Sie versus Du  was such a big deal back then.

 

Ich ging zur Schule, but I remember nothing!   Please do not assume that I know German  

 

I am like you, I do not even try to try my daughter's  Black&Red notebooks,  I just  get her feedback that she is happy with them and that is all that I need. 

I am finding  that this TreeZero paper will be a good partner for me going forward. Hopefully they do not change the formula like target did and messed up all my plans.  I will stock up on  some decent amount just in case

 

Have a great day Bo Bo and thank you for caring and following up.

 

 

[bunnspecial]

Just as some idle musings with the questions original premise...

 

It's automatically assumed that bigger nib=bigger writing, but that's not necessarily the cases. There have been some examples shown recently in the MB forum of the O3B nib(oblique triple broad), which remains quite legible at moderate sizes despite being a nib capable of producing huge lines.

 

At least on German pens, B and larger nibs tend to be stubby, and the larger the nib the more pronounced this is. Basically, the best way I could describe it is that a B nib is almost "flat" ground on the end and maybe a bit wider parallel to the nib than it is perpendicular. As sizes grow, the perpendicular width stays roughly constant, but the parallel width increases, giving again what we'd typically call a stub.

 

Obliques throw something else interesting into the mix(and yes, modern obliques at least from MB show pronounced line variation, despite what some want to claim).

 

Basically, with all of this, you can actually still keep your writing relatively small if you use the stubbiness to your advantage to avoid filling in letters and consequently legibility remains.

 

Here's a quick writing sample with my terrible writing, for which I apologize, but hopefully this will give some idea. Basically, I've done a couple of things here. The first line is written with what I'd probably call a "fat wide" on a vintage Parker. It's about the width of, or maybe a tiny bit skinnier than, a what you'd get if you bought a new(gold) F from MB or Pelikan.

 

On each subsequent line, I've moved to larger nibs but tried to do two things. For the first written line for each nib width, I've kept the length the same but changed the letter height. For the second line, I've tried to keep the overall dimensions the same.

 

The OBB nib has an "as small as I can make it" line, which as you can see is similar in size to the first line. It's bordering on being difficult to read for letter fill in.

 

A different person's writing may change these overall conclusions.

[amberleadavis]

@A Smug Dill thank you for noting this top and @bunnspecial, thank you for the images.

 

To refer to the original topic, it is not that I don't write a specific size for a particular purpose - as ASD pointed out, forms or checks have a limited amount of room.  When I go to fill out the forms at my doctor's office, I don't take my beloved 1.5 nib, I take a medium nib.

 

I thought that I really did alter the size of my penmanship based on the pen, but when I looked at samples, I discovered that I have trained myself to write with the same line spacing independent of nib size.  See for example this page, using a Fine, an EF (the Calligraphy is close to an EF and a Medium).  The size is about the same.  I have worked so hard to have my letters be uniform (and even though they aren't), I don't want them to become less uniform.

 

 

 

 

Here is a sample of my writing with a MB Italic edge which is about a 4B and with two MB medium nibs both custom ground smaller (one is a stub and the other a CI).  As you can see, the size of my letters is not very different from the 4B below compared to the Fine or Medium nibs.

 

 

So, my answer - Muscle Memory.

[ParramattaPaul]

This is just one man's opinion, but I suspect tessting would prove it correct.  Writing involves what is called muscle memory which can be described as brain/hand co-ordination that has been developed over time and constant repetition.  It allow the individual to repeat the same manipulation in the same way much like a tennis player making the same serve.  The toss is always the same.  The racket hand moves in the same arc and at the same speed to propel the ball to the same point on the court.  Writing is the same.  Our brain subconsciously directst each individual stroke needed form a given letter in same way regardless of the nib or pen used unless we consciously choose otherwise.  We write subconsciously and therefore we write the same way and form letters of the same size simply because that is what is our habit.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Some folks take inordinate pride in writing so small a teacher would need a magnifying glass to read it....don't know if paper was too expensive for them at some stage.

When one writes with collage lined paper, a B really don't make any sense.

 

I do have a cure for writing tiny. Take two sheets of paper, fold in four. Start writing as very large as you can, on one quarter, and slowly work one's way down to normal minuscule on the end paper.

One should be able to write with an M at least after that.

After a bit of practice with an M, one should do the trick again to be able to use a B.

 

I have no problem writing large or small....English teachers prefer large in they have a better chance at reading my bad handwriting.

 

 

[ParramattaPaul]

I know someone who started writing small when he was in high school in an effort to mimic the size of typewritten letters.  To this day, his hand writing is small, circa 16/18 pt, and he uses M and B nibs.

[Bo Bo Olson]

29 minutes ago, ParramattaPaul said:

he uses M and B nibs.

Now that is a trick!!!

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Some folks take inordinate pride in writing so small a teacher would need a magnifying glass to read it....don't know if paper was too expensive for them at some stage.

 

I don’t care whether they need a magnifying glass to read it; that’s not my problem or concern. If a page of 12-point Helvetica is widely considered to be legible, then I endeavour to train my hand to be able to write as small and as legibly as that. I’ll gladly accept that it may be easier, and perhaps less stressful, for someone to read a page of 14-point Helvetica instead; but it isn’t my priority to make my handwriting relatively effortless for others to read, especially if it’s incumbent on the reader to read it carefully and understand the content carefully, e.g. teachers marking my assignments, or colleagues who have to act on my notes and directives. I like to produce stuff that is information-dense in so many ways; and if assignment markers happen to miss some of the details on the densely written page, I’ll gladly and non-privately challenge their assessment of my work.

[TSherbs]

4 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Some folks take inordinate pride in writing so small a teacher would need a magnifying glass to read it....don't know if paper was too expensive for them at some stage....

 

 

My students would sometimes compete to see who could answer a five-question quiz legibly on the smallest piece of paper. Pretty funny sometimes. 

[Doug C]

My handwriting changes with every pen never mind the nib size.

 

[OCArt]

2 hours ago, Doug C said:

My handwriting changes with every pen never mind the nib size.

 

+1

[Strega]

I do adjust my writing size.  When I am practicing a new character (Chinese) over and over, I write on a large grid in the size my teacher likes to see them.  So, for these, I use a Pelikan F (.5mm) for simple characters or a Pelikan EF (.4mm) for less simple characters.  However, when it’s time to write sentences on the teacher’s homework handouts, she doesn’t leave anywhere near that much room, so I switch to a Sailor EF or a Nibsmith EEF-ized Pelikan nib which are both around .2mm.

 

Of course, I’m selecting the tool to match the task, not adjusting the task to match the tool.  I suppose if I only had one pen, then I would do that. ie: “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

[A Smug Dill]

On 8/10/2022 at 2:28 PM, amberleadavis said:

… the size of my letters is not very different from the 4B below compared to the Fine or Medium nibs.

 

So, my answer - Muscle Memory.

On 8/10/2022 at 3:10 PM, ParramattaPaul said:

Our brain subconsciously directst each individual stroke needed form a given letter in same way regardless of the nib or pen used unless we consciously choose otherwise.  We write subconsciously and therefore we write the same way and form letters of the same size simply because that is what is our habit.

 

Indeed that also carries across different writing instruments and not just various nibs:

[amberleadavis]

41 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Indeed that also carries across different writing instruments and not just various nibs:

 

When I was in school, the teacher would have us write our new spelling words 10x each.  I continued the practice with SAT and then LSAT vocabulary words. I don't know how to spell the words when I type, but I can often write the words correctly in cursive.

[TSherbs]

I meant to add that my handwriting is so uncontrolled that it changes size sometimes word by word or letter by letter. <shrug>