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...in America.
At least in Argentina, the children at school still use a fountain pen and learn cursive. In secondary they usualy switch to a ballpoint.
If you prefer something larger,the Jinhao 159 is a clone of the Montblanc Meisterstück 149 http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/216230-jinhao-... and is under $6 on ebay
If you want to try fountain pens but don't want to spend $$ on a nice one at first, check out the Pilot Varsity line.[1] They're cheap and disposable and seem to write pretty well. (I'm no expert on fountain pens though.) I use them for note taking at meetings and whatnot. You do want a fairly fine/tight paper to write on though - the same as any other liquid-ink pen. [1] http://pilotpen.us/categories/fountain-pens/v…
I personally never liked writing on paper, it was ugly and time-consuming; I would never be able to express myself on paper: I'll compress the meaning away or just quit halfway through.
Any lefties here? I'm a lefty and feel stuck with the basic ballpoint because any other pen I try ends up with everything smudged. Not sure if that's just poor form on my part.
But as a lefty, I feel like the proper experience of using them is pretty much off limits to me.
It is most telling, to me, to hear people (none of them made from straw) admit that writer's cramp is part and parcel of a single session of taking notes or writing an hour-long exam. Professional copyists and secretaries in the early 20th century weren't biting down on their lower lips to push through the pain every time they put pen to paper during ten- and twelve-hour workdays. They just used better tools for that…
The Palmer method descends from Spencerian script, an excessively flowery and not-all-that-legible form of writing from the days when people wanted to make their writing look difficult and fancy. Writing in a fancy style is fine for calligraphers making wedding invitations or whatever, but is a poor model for teaching children or for everyday use for most people. Italic (aka chancery cursive), a script of renaissance…
Agreed with one exception: capital A. The Spencerian A looks elegant while the Palmerian A looks like 3/4 of someone's bottom.
Everything else is a bit of a shrug in my book.
Any lefties here? I'm a lefty and feel stuck with the basic ballpoint because any other pen I try ends up with everything smudged. Not sure if that's just poor form on my part.
I could have pretty decent handwriting for about an hour and then fatigue simply set it and most of my writing is an illegible mess. Not surprisingly, when I was young and we were graded on handwriting my grades were pretty poor.
Cursive didn't help much either as the continuous strokes simply meant I made more of a mess all over myself.
I was an okay sketch artist as a kid, so I had good pen control, just could never really adapt myself to the written word.
Lots of lefties go through all kinds of contortions to improve some of the situation, you'll notice Obama reaches around where he's writing so he can pull on the pen. I tried that for a while but the back and shoulder cramps were pretty spectacularly killer.
https://traceyricksfoster.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/obama-...
Any lefties here? I'm a lefty and feel stuck with the basic ballpoint because any other pen I try ends up with everything smudged. Not sure if that's just poor form on my part.
Me too. I love nice pens, paper, calligraphy, the works. I practically fetishize it and drool over Moleskines every time I'm in a bookstore. But as a lefty, I feel like the proper experience of using them is pretty much off limits to me.
My daily driver is currently a Monteverde Invincia Deluxe Stainless Steel ($65), which looks fantastic and is a great performer. I highly recommend to that anyone with large hands, because it's definitely not small. I also recommend the Pilot Metropolitan (~$12) [1] and the Waterman Phileas (~$50) all of which I have used extensively for class notes.
If I don't have one of my FPs for whatever reason, then I have been known to go for smooth "roller ball" pens as well - they use more lubricated ink than standard ball points and require less pressure, so they generally feel like mediocre fountain pens.
