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The cheap pen that changed writing forever

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Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#11

Post by hinkley »

bluedino wrote: post #3
kaonwarb wrote: post #2

One side effect not discussed here: how the shift to ballpoint pens increased hand strain [0]. Writing with a fountain pen is relatively effortless - not to deny it has several other drawbacks. I imagine this is part of why, as an elementary school student in France, I was required to write with only fountain pens. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...

I always use roller/gel pens, but I have never tried a fountain pen. I cannot use a cheap stick ballpoint pen. My writing looks bad, my hand cramps up, I don’t know why that is.

I find the uniball gel pen substantially easier to write with, so conversely I find all other ball point pens harder to write with. I know in college there were certain pens that hurt to use all day and I quickly got rid of those.

Most of my favorite pens at the moment are uniball, or take the same refill size and I’ve converted them. Somewhere I have a collapsing fountain pen but I had to be careful of the type of paper and I let it dry up at some point, got it working again, and forgot about it because I found another collapsing pen I could shoehorn the uniball gel into (by swapping the spring)

Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#12

Post by yoz-y »

ginko wrote: post #10
WalterBright wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gel pens are my favorite, but I did enjoy using fountain pens in grade school - I just liked the way the result looked.

How anyone can enjoy writing with fountain pens is completely beyond me. They were the bane of my childhood.

In my school we had to use a fountain pen up until fourth grade (lefties had an exception). The day I could finally ditch the fountain pen was a happy one indeed.

Nowadays I use gel pens, best of both worlds. I definitely agree that ballpoint pens are hard on the wrists.

Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#14

Post by Tehdasi »

"Fountain pens were messy and needed regular refilling"

So the solution is to not make the refilling better and less messy, it was to invent landfill. Not only from having to replace the pen when it ran out of ink, but from high failure rate of the aforesaid pens.

Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#15

Post by criddell »

kaonwarb wrote: post #2

One side effect not discussed here: how the shift to ballpoint pens increased hand strain [0]. Writing with a fountain pen is relatively effortless - not to deny it has several other drawbacks. I imagine this is part of why, as an elementary school student in France, I was required to write with only fountain pens. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...

What's the difference between the kind of strain you get from pressing harder with a ball point pen and the kind of strain you get from lifting weights in a gym? I guess what I'm really asking is if your body will adapt to the increased hand strain? Is it a short-term problem?

Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#17

Post by virtue3 »

criddell wrote: post #15
kaonwarb wrote: post #2

One side effect not discussed here: how the shift to ballpoint pens increased hand strain [0]. Writing with a fountain pen is relatively effortless - not to deny it has several other drawbacks. I imagine this is part of why, as an elementary school student in France, I was required to write with only fountain pens. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...

What's the difference between the kind of strain you get from pressing harder with a ball point pen and the kind of strain you get from lifting weights in a gym? I guess what I'm really asking is if your body will adapt to the increased hand strain? Is it a short-term problem?

you lift weights along muscle systems designed to handle load.

Your wrist/elbows etc are relatively weak. See tennis elbow, etc.

The other issue is that you end up writing 4-6hrs a day in school 5days a week, wheras the gym is something like, maybe 20 minutes per muscle group? depending. And that doesn't tend to be more than 3-4x a week.

I used to weightlift with a much lighter ex. The one thing I noticed was that even tho I could lift substantially more, our recovery rate was basically the same. So I'd end up with a lot more nagging injuries over time if I didn't properly take care of myself.

Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#18

Post by ta8645 »

enriquto wrote: post #16

The wording of this article is very strange. All references to fountain pens happen in the past tense, as if they did not exist anymore. Millions of people still use fountain pens every day. The author lives in a bubble of ballpoint users or what?

Don't most of us live in a bubble of ballpoint users? It is the most pervasive pen by a pretty wide margin.

Re: The cheap pen that changed writing forever

#20

Post by enriquto »

ta8645 wrote: post #18
enriquto wrote: post #16

The wording of this article is very strange. All references to fountain pens happen in the past tense, as if they did not exist anymore. Millions of people still use fountain pens every day. The author lives in a bubble of ballpoint users or what?

Don't most of us live in a bubble of ballpoint users? It is the most pervasive pen by a pretty wide margin.

I don't think so. I have lived, studied, and taught in three different European countries and everywhere, a sizeable proportion of students used fountain pens (a large majority in the case of France). For my part, I use mostly rollers and fountain pens, and I hate the high pressure needed to use ballpoints.

EDIT: In any case, even if most people use only ballpoint pens, it seems very hard to live without ever crossing a fountain pen user (as seems to be the case for the author of this article).

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