Writing mathematics - newbie trying to control the pen

[penthomas]

Hello everyone,

 

this looks like a great community. I have recently started using a fountain pen, a Pilot custom 74 with an F nib. While I enjoy it very much, I notice that I have less control over the pen than when writing with a ball point or gel ink pen. This is in particular an issue when writing mathematics (which a do a lot) with tiny subscripts and the like. The problem is not that the line/nib is not fine enough, it is rather the result is sometimes less clear and precise due to (I feel) less control over the pen. This is not a problem for me when writing natural language sentences, but it is sometimes a problem with mathematics where clarity and precision and detail is everything. It is really crucial that a tiny c doesn't look like a tiny a. I don't know why I feel I have less control; maybe it is the distance from my grip to the point of the nib (longer), maybe it is the slight flex of the nib, maybe it is my grip, maybe it is the angle. Maybe it is just my lack of experience and I should just use it more.

 

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance!

[BlueJ]

You might try a Sailor fountain pen in F or MF. Sailor nibs are less slick than Pilot's, having what is often called "pencil-like feedback." This facilitates control of the tip.

[A Smug Dill]

It takes time to develop the light touch one “should” have when using a competently tuned (i.e. for ink flow) fountain pen, and the sensory acuity to respond to the kinaesthetic feedback transmitted from the contact point between nib tipping and paper surface, up the stem of the pen to one's fingers. It took me years before I was able to do this:

 

In my experience, holding the pen with an incident angle that is steeper, i.e. closer to vertical, improves control when “printing” or producing separated symbols consisting of disjoint pen strokes; and (in particular, Japanese) nibs tend to put down a finer line of ink when the incident angle is closer to vertical. So, get to know your pen and nib, and how they write at different incident angles. Your Pilot 14K gold size #5 F nib is technically fit for purpose when it comes to writing small; I bet I (and you, too, with practice) can fit nine digits in a 3x3 formation inside a 5mm-wide square area on the page.

 

Alternatively, you could make your “life” a little easier in the near term by getting a Pilot Custom 742 or Custom Heritage 912 with a PO nib, which is designed to be very stiff while putting down consistently fine lines of ink, so that the downward pressure you apply with your writing hand, as well as the incident angle, wouldn't matter as much to the outcome.

[Lithium466]

I agree with the writing angle recommendation.
 

Of course experimenting with different inks (dryer) could be something to do  too, and if varying the writing angle isn't something that works out (for physical reasons, or just because the results aren't what expected), there's always the finer nib option.
On top of the PO nib recommendation, I'll add a Platinum 3776 in UEF, which will at the same time provide more feedback and make it easier to control mathematical strokes (does this even make sense?).

 

And then, well you have the paper. Don't know what you are using, but within the usually easy to find A4 notebooks you can try Fabriano paper.

 

My go to school papers were Rhodia (before they became part of Clairefontaine, gosh that paper wasn't the best) and Clairefontaine (which wasn't as smooth as nowadays), with a dry Rotring pen, coupled with the dry (to me) Waterman Florida blue ink. Of course at that time I didn't know that better things existed...

[penthomas]

9 hours ago, BlueJ said:

You might try a Sailor fountain pen in F or MF. Sailor nibs are less slick than Pilot's, having what is often called "pencil-like feedback." This facilitates control of the tip.

Thank you!

[penthomas]

8 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

It takes time to develop the light touch one “should” have when using a competently tuned (i.e. for ink flow) fountain pen, and the sensory acuity to respond to the kinaesthetic feedback transmitted from the contact point between nib tipping and paper surface, up the stem of the pen to one's fingers. It took me years before I was able to do this:

 

Wow! This is encouraging. I won't give up just yet, then 🙂 

 

8 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

In my experience, holding the pen with an incident angle that is steeper, i.e. closer to vertical, improves control when “printing” or producing separated symbols consisting of disjoint pen strokes; and (in particular, Japanese) nibs tend to put down a finer line of ink when the incident angle is closer to vertical. So, get to know your pen and nib, and how they write at different incident angles. Your Pilot 14K gold size #5 F nib is technically fit for purpose when it comes to writing small; I bet I (and you, too, with practice) can fit nine digits in a 3x3 formation inside a 5mm-wide square area on the page.

 

Alternatively, you could make your “life” a little easier in the near term by getting a Pilot Custom 742 or Custom Heritage 912 with a PO nib, which is designed to be very stiff while putting down consistently fine lines of ink, so that the downward pressure you apply with your writing hand, as well as the incident angle, wouldn't matter as much to the outcome.

 

3 hours ago, Lithium466 said:

I agree with the writing angle recommendation.
 

Of course experimenting with different inks (dryer) could be something to do  too, and if varying the writing angle isn't something that works out (for physical reasons, or just because the results aren't what expected), there's always the finer nib option.
On top of the PO nib recommendation, I'll add a Platinum 3776 in UEF, which will at the same time provide more feedback and make it easier to control mathematical strokes (does this even make sense?).

 

And then, well you have the paper. Don't know what you are using, but within the usually easy to find A4 notebooks you can try Fabriano paper.

 

My go to school papers were Rhodia (before they became part of Clairefontaine, gosh that paper wasn't the best) and Clairefontaine (which wasn't as smooth as nowadays), with a dry Rotring pen, coupled with the dry (to me) Waterman Florida blue ink. Of course at that time I didn't know that better things existed...

 

Thank you both for the suggestions and for taking the time to explain. Very useful!

 

Angle: will start experimenting with that.

Ink: interesting, I didn't realise that would be a factor. The one I'm using now is just black blue from Pilot.

Paper: that makes sense. I'm using MD paper now. I will check out some of the suggestions.

Suggested alternative pens: Pilots with PO nib noted, very interesting. I will def. check those out when in Japan in a couple of weeks. I did actually try Platinum 3776 in in both EF and UEF! I really liked the pen. The UEF felt a bit like writing with a needle, and I wasn't able to spot a difference in line width compared to EF, but it might have been the paper I guess.

 

Btw, @A Smug Dill I never heard about tuning before. Is it possible to get this done if you buy a pen in one of the big shops in Tokyo for example? Is it a free service?

 

By the way, I misspoke: the Pilot 74 I have is an EF, not F (I'm new to this!).

[dipper]

18 hours ago, penthomas said:

maybe it is the distance from my grip to the point of the nib (longer)

That change could be a significant disruption.

 

I have been using fountain pens and pencils all my life, much more than ballpoints or rollerballs. I have better control with a fountain pen than with a ballpoint. Despite that difference in past experience and muscle memory etc .... if I move my pen grip position further away from the writing tip then the reduced control of small details is noticeable.

 

Gripping further back is good for sweeping gestural lines when sketching with a pen (which is the reason why I do vary my grip position), but not for executing the fine detailed movements needed when writing tiny maths subscripts.

 

You have not said why you are holding the Pilot 74 further back than your usual ballpoint grip.

If the length of the exposed fountain-pen nib is what is forcing you back (?) then one option is a pen with a shorter nib, or a pen with a hooded nib.

For example, a Platinum Preppy may be griped closer to the tip than a Bic....!

Available in nib sizes "M"/0.5mm as above, "F"/0.3mm, or "EF"/0.2mm, for less than the price of a bottle of ink.

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

11 hours ago, penthomas said:

Btw, @A Smug Dill I never heard about tuning before. Is it possible to get this done if you buy a pen in one of the big shops in Tokyo for example?

 

Short answer: In all likelihood, no.

 

Tuning primarily relates to adjusting, where necessary or desired, the ink flow at the “business end”, i.e. nib and feed, of the writing instrument, although some folks also tacitly or expressly include checking for proper tine alignment, which plausibly has some influence on ink flow but is mostly about ensuring a nib doesn't write more “scratchily” than one would expect from a glob of metal tipping material of that width. 

 

If you're new to fountain pens, as we all were once, don't worry about tuning and such. A responsibly produced and sold brand new fountain pen will need no tuning, any more than one would expect having to ask for, or be concerned about, tuning when buying a brand new grand piano.

 

Especially with gold-nibbed (or otherwise mid-range to high-end) models from the Japanese ‘Big Three’ fountain pen brands — being Pilot, Platinum, and Sailor^† — you can reasonably expect a brand new pen would already have the performance characteristics intended by the manufacturer.

 

Never mind that some purchasers and users have their own ideas of how they expect or want their fountain pens to perform, irrespective of make, model, and nib type and width grade. Some enthusiasts just like ‘wet’-writing pens, that put down lots of colourant over every square micrometre of area covered by ink tracks on the page, and allege pale shades of colour from an ink, on account of spreading it thinly over the covered are — in other words, ‘dry’ writing — to be evidence of a problem or defect that ought not be in a generally fit for purpose writing instrument. In my opinion, they're confusing (or conflating) what they find subjectively satisfactory with what conforms to the manufacturer's design goals and technical specifications for a consumer product.

 

A small number (and minority) of retailers — mostly based in US, and an odd few in Europe — that sell fountain pens online will (position and) offer tuning, to the customer's expressed preference of ink flow, on request as a personalised value-add service. I'm sure there are other writing instrument specialist stores that, should you shop with them or approach them on their physical premises, would have the in-house expertise to check and tune a fountain pen for you.

 

The only Japanese big-name (but, I suppose, still low-volume) vendor that offers tuning would be Nakaya, if you order from it online, and it'll dispatch your pen only when it's ready. In a big, bricks-and-mortar retail store in Tokyo, where most if not all fountain pens sold are brand new and often sealed in clear plastic sleeves applied at the factory, I don't think the staff would either be keen or be trained to touch and make technical adjustments to newly sold pens on the spot.

 

More often than not, Japanese fountain pens are (‘tuned’ to be) not particularly ‘wet’, but the ink flow will be sufficient to support continuous writing without skipping (i.e. breaks in the ink line along a pen stroke) or other symptoms of ink starvation. Keep in mind that, in Japanese (and Chinese) writing, most pen strokes are relatively short, even when writing cursively; so it'd be an “edge case” to try to draw a 10cm (in total length) continuous line, with or without twists and turns, relatively quickly.

 

If you want to put down tiny symbols legibly inside tight spaces, then ‘wet’ writing would generally be counterproductive.

 

11 hours ago, penthomas said:

By the way, I misspoke: the Pilot 74 I have is an EF, not F (I'm new to this!).

 

No problem.

 

I personally dislike the Pilot Custom 74's ergonomics, but my wife has a C74 with an EF nib (which I've tested, before handing the pen over to her), and I have a Custom Heritage 91 with a 14K gold EF nib of the same size‡. They're among the thinnest-writing nibs I've used, and rivals Platinum's gold UEF nibs. (The ‘medium-sized’ 14K gold EF nibs made by Sailor are also comparably fine.)

 

If you're:

• not using an ink-and-paper combination that exhibit an undue degree of line spreading (i.e. observed line width, once dried, being incongruent with the width of the line of ink initially deposited on the paper surface), woolly outlines (as opposed to crisp outlines or edges on the ink marks), and/or feathering (ink travelling along the fibres in the paper branching in various directions);
• not pressing so hard on the paper surface with the pen to damage, scratch, or cut through the sizing (i.e. coating) that helps control how ink settles, and the nib moves laterally; and
• not pressing so hard that the nib is making indentations in and “stretching” the paper around the metal tipping, thus increasing the contact surface area over which ink is deposited and spread,

then there should be no issue with ink marks left by your pen strokes merging with each other, closing up counter spaces in letters and symbols, and so on.

 

 

^† In alphabetical order, but not ranked by merit, market share, or any other measure.

‡ As in physical size, designated as number 5 by Pilot, and not the width grade.

 

[Lithium466]

8 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

If you're new to fountain pens, as we all were once, don't worry about tuning and such. A responsibly produced and sold brand new fountain pen will need no tuning, any more than one would expect having to ask for, or be concerned about, tuning when buying a brand new grand piano.

 

I apologize as I couldn't help the off topic, but when you buy a piano (granted, I only ever bought one in my life) and they (the store) are serious about it, they should come tune it after a few days for free (and mine is a very basic CZ made).

Same when we rented some fancy grand piano from Steinway & Sons for events, they were retuned the day after delivery, and carefully checked/adjusted just before being played. I don't know if it's still done this way as I haven't touched a piano in 15 years now. Maybe it was just the local piano shop being extra thorough!

 

 

Off topic aside, I agree with the fountain pen relevant part, very well explained, thank you. Also damn you for making me want to purchase a Custom 91 in EF, as they seem to be available for slightly cheaper than the 74. I'll need to see if the nib is less "flat" than the Platinum 3776 in UEF first.

 

@penthomas, I suggest starting by trying another ink. Platinum blue black for ex, if you want to stay with blue black.

Pilot blue black is a well lubricated and flowing ink, quite water resistant but not always the best behaved on some papers.

 

[effrafax]

Apart from all the excellent advice above, I'd suggest that if you find you are flexing the F nib on the 74, you are pressing WAY too hard.  Lighten the pressure on the nib, and you may find that sub/superscripts become much more legible.

 

[max_hat]

@penthomas As someone who studied mathematics, I have always been particular about pens that I used. Felt tip pens and some gel pens (in particular those by Pentel) were my preferred choice when on the move; when stationary, I found hard fine and extra fine nibs (in particular those by Sailor, early Japanese Visconti nibs, Manifold Wahl-Eversharp nibs, Conway Stewart hard Duro nibs, and stenographic nibs in general) to be the best for fine writing when dealing with, say, differential geometry and tensor calculus. A more lubricated inks (such as Iroshizuku and Diamine inks) will lead to smoother and wetter writing, which might not be most appropriate for lot of technical writing. Some coated paper (such as Tomoe River) or more absorbent paper (such as some Midori paper) will allow for a better control when writing extra small indices. I do, however, think that if you are relatively new to using fountain pens, you will soon learn how to control a fountain pen better. Alternatively, you can try stylographic pens (stylos) and fountain pens with titanium nibs (in particular those made by OMAS).

 

Good luck in your pen search and your math research!

 

Mark