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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 job (leak as the tools might do) and were taught how to write with focus on posture and movement, not on letterforms alone.
I don't strictly use the letterforms or all the best practices of the Palmer method—see the article for a link—but using a Palmer book as a guide, I managed to teach myself to write with a relaxed grip and no movement in the fingers or wrist, and I can go for hours now and walk away with no more discomfort than the stiffness of sitting without relief.
It is hard to write like this using most ballpoints because you do need to exert more force to get a consistent line out of the things. You don't need a fountain or dip pen, however—just a soft-leaded pencil (try an art supply shop), a good rollerball pen, or some gel pens. None of these write as effortlessly as a fountain pen, but neither do they require the kind of cramp-inducing force that a Bic pen does.
I've read mid-century materials on this topic before. My sense is that this isn't a new argument so much as a forgotten one.
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 Italy, is a much better model.
Here’s a great page targeted at teaching children to write, with lots of exercises: http://briem.net
Also see http://luc.devroye.org/Briem1985-IcelandicMethod.pdf and http://66.147.242.192/~operinan/8/2/205.html
I take your point, but it has to be said that the copyists and e.g. book keepers in 19th and 20th century wrote more slowly and methodically than students scribbling in a lecture. As the author Rosemary Sassoon quoted in OA put it...
"most of us need a flexible way of writing—fast, almost a scribble for ourselves to read, and progressively slower and more legible for other purposes."
I have a suspicion that we mainly use pens/paper for the writing fast bits and the purposes for which slower writing was needed are now achieved using our keyboards.
My personal test for a pen of any kind is to hold it lightly between thumb and index finger, and then drag the pen down a page so that the only force pressing the nib/ball/tip onto the paper is the pen's own weight. If it leaves a line then I can use it without hand pain for fairly long periods. If it does not, then I'll use it mainly for shopping lists and post-it notes. Most but not all fountain pens pass that test as do some of the gel pens that produce wider lines such as the Uniball signos. Felt pens e.g. Sharpie fine points can pass the test as well!
As mentioned in a sibling comment to this, italic writing was taught in most UK schools for most of the 1960s onwards.
Since Bic Cristal pens are my writing tool of choice, I have to say I find it strange you only mention Bic. Maybe a Bic pen isn't the right tool for how you write, but you can definitely use it without getting cramps.
since you went through the research, what do you think of the other "methods". I ask because of this:
The Palmer Method began to fall out of popularity in the 1950s and was eventually supplanted by the Zaner-Bloser method, which sought to teach children manuscript before teaching them cursive, in order to provide them with a means of written expression as soon as possible, and thus develop writing skills.[6] The D'Nealian method, introduced in 1978, sought to address problems raised by the Zaner-Bloser method, returning to a more cursive style. The Palmer company stopped publishing in the 1980s.
On the other hand, I certainly used ballpoint pens a lot when I was taking primarily handwritten notes or taking exams and I didn't get writer's cramp the way I do today if I write for any length of time. I never really cared for fountain pens and the mass market alternatives weren't available at the time so all the way through high school and college I mostly used ballpoints. I did type in college for papers and articles but notetaking was all by hand.
Practice might be another aspect of this. When I was a young child, I had the ability to write longhand all day, and a callus on my middle finger where I rested my pen or pencil. As an adult, that is all gone.
I've almost exclusively used fountain pens for about 5 years now, and it's been amazing. Modern fountain pens don't generally leak much, and they are SO much better to write with than a basic Bic/generic ballpoint. The primary difference is that you don't have to push down at all which saves your hand from a huge amount of stress after a long writing session. I really don't understand why more people don't use them these days. Another bonus is that you can choose from a very wide variety of inks, so you can change it up whenever you feel like it.
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.
I'm a year into the fountain pen habit, and have an absurd collection at this point.
My daily carry is a Pilot Vanishing Point (EF or a custom-ground 0.6mm italic) and a Sailor Sapporo Mini (hard fine). Those are about $175 and $200 retail, respectively.
Note that I didn't pay anywhere near that, as I've been buying, trading, repairing, and selling pens since shortly after I started. In total, I'm slightly in the black at the moment.
I recommend Reddit's /r/fountainpens - there is an IRC server listed in the sidebar, and it's surprisingly active.
Just a heads-up, Japanese import stores sell these for about 4 bucks:
http://www.gouletpens.com/Platinum-Preppy-Fountain-Pen/c/280
It's a great fountain pen for four bucks, I use them exclusively now (and don't worry too much about losing them, because four bucks!!).
how would you compare them with Gel Rollerballs ? [1]
I am partial to the Parker rollerball refills - I use a Parker Chinese Laque Ambre - but do not want the inconvenience of a fountain pen.
I believe a rollerball is like the Nespresso to the fountain pen's espresso. Slightly worse - but much better than ball point pens.
But the best part that I like about rollerballs is how you can get an expensive experience in a cheap pen. For example Mont Blanc refills can be hacked to fit a cheap G2 [2]
[1] http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/241755-which-p...
[2] http://www.instructables.com/id/Save-$200-in-2-minutes-and-h...
I too love fountain pens and write very fast using one.
The only problem is that, in business meetings people tend to assume you're trying to make some kind of hipster statement.
Everywhere I go I'm usually the only one using a foutain pen; what a shame.
I tend to prefer roller ball pens but I'm pretty much a lost cause when it comes to writing at this point anyway. Handwriting was never one of my better subjects in grade school under the best of circumstances but looking through old notebooks as they progress over the years apparently reveals a general descent into total loss of right hand muscular control. :-)
I used to use fountain pens for a long time but returned to Bic Cristal ballpoints a few years ago. They just work and they are available everywhere.
In France everyone uses ballpoints, and yet everyone writes cursive, so I very much doubt there's any connection between the two.
The weird handwriting of Americans certainly has to do with how they're taught, not what they use.
I have three kids that are currently learning to write (aged 6, 7 and 10) and a great deal of time is spent forming nice, cursive letters (copying lines of frequent letter pairs to lean how to join them properly and nicely for example).
I'm not saying this is good or bad (I like cursive and am happy my kids are learning it, but would like they would also learn to touch type, which isn't taught in school), but I am saying that you write how you learned to write...
I wouldn't say that everyone uses ballpoints, I used fountain pens during most of my education in France and so did most of my classmates. Many (most?) teachers still require their students to use fountain pens (one of the reasons is probably the fact that you can use an eraser, so it makes for cleaner papers...). Even after getting out of school, I don't use ballpoints if I can avoid them, because they're not as fast.
I took touch typing in the 1980s. It was just on an IBM Selectric "massaging" typewriter :-)
Bvvvvvvvvvvvv.... (the sound that thing made)
Discussions about cursive writing on the Internet confused me quite a bit until I noticed that there seems to be a pretty large difference between what I learned in Germany and what people in the US learned.
What children learn in Germany for at least a few decades now looks like the following: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Vereinfachte_Ausgangssch...
From what I understand, the cursive script that was taught in US schools was much more complicated with lots of little flourishes. The simplified cursive script seems a lot more practical to me, and I wonder if that is a factor in the the decline of cursive writing. The negative reactions to cursive writing I've read on the internet from people in the US seemed a lot stronger than anything I've ever heard from Germans.
Indeed, in France everyone still write in cursive even with ball pens.
Having to lift the pen for each letter seems so tedious that I don't understand how Americans can write such long texts in print.
The only case where we don't is to fill administrative forms, as they force you to write in print for legibility.
Interesting, I guess there are some regional differences then, as well. This is what I learned in elementary school in the 90s (in NRW): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Deutsche_normalschrift_a...
For what it's worth I still try to use it whenever I write by hand (which is rare in the first place), but often revert to print because I can't usually decipher my cursive a day later.
According to wikipedia, american may learn D'Nealian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian which is not terribly different from what is taught in France (Écriture A : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modèles_d%27écriture_scolaire_...) or from Deutsche Normalschrift (whose t is more readable than other german scolar scripts).
Since I was taught in a California public school in the 1980s, I believe I was taught using the Zaner-Bloser method. As someone else mentioned, the lowercase letters look mostly the same, but there are more differences in the uppercase letters. The main thing that strikes me in looking at your example is that I would have to lift my pen/pencil to generate most of those uppercase letters. In general, if I write in cursive, I only lift my pen/pencil off the page at the end of a word, and I tend to drag the tail of the last letter of the word back if I need to cross a 't' or dot an 'i' or 'j'. I also developed a habit of crossing my 'z' (and 'Z', and the number 7), oddly enough, from my German teacher in high school (though she was from Munich, and probably learned her handwriting in the 1940s or 1950s).
For what it is worth, the lowercase cursive characters I learned in American public primary school around ~2002 were very similar or possibly identical to the lowercase characters in your image. However, the uppercase characters did have some more complexity.
I call bullshit, in Russia people still write in cursive long after introduction of ballpoint pen, because that's what people are taught in school. It also happens to be much faster than print, regardless of the writing implement, so that helps too.
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.
I love fountain pens and highly encourage everyone to try them (with a good notebook helps). First, ballpoint pens are wasteful — 1.6 billion pens a year are thrown away[1]. Fountain pens are reusable, ink is comparatively cheap and lasts forever, and finding your ink is a fun and personal experience (I really like the "bulletproof" Noodler's inks which are waterproof, bleach proof, etc.). Fountain pens last forever — which is why folks still hunt around for 40+ year old used ones.
Second, it really does make writing fun. I hated writing — my handwriting is messy, it's slow, and it's not as easy as typing. As the article argues, a good fountain pen makes it much, and in my experience much more enjoyable.
Third, it doesn't need to be expensive. Get a Lamy Safari (EF), a Lamy converter and a bottle of Noodlers ink. I also love my Faber Castell Loom[2] (it's the smoothest pen I own), and I carry around a Kaweco Al-Sport[3] everywhere (it's the perfect pocket pen).
[1] http://www.epa.gov/superfund/students/clas_act/haz-ed/ff06.p... [2] http://www.gouletpens.com/faber-castell-loom-metallic-orange... [3] http://www.jetpens.com/Kaweco-AL-Sport-Fountain-Pen-Fine-Nib...
Nice HN discussion about handwriting from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2500864
I like this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2501152 – a partial quotation:
> Almost all US schools have standardized on forms of looped cursive (e.g. Parker Penmanship, Zaner-Bloser) -- a set of letterforms designed not for handwriting, but for the movable type printing press! Looped cursive was made to be attractive with the fewest unique joins possible so that printers needed to stock fewer pieces for their movable type presses. Looped cursive is slower, less legible, and more difficult to learn than forms of writing actually made to be written (such as cursive italic).
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 learned cursive writing in first grade in 1958 (in Detroit) and we were already using ballpoint pens. But the desks we used had working inkwells, emptied of the ink, so I'd guess the change was fairly recent because a few years later the inkwells had been removed just leaving big holes in the desks where they'd resided.
The biggest thing back then was that I was left handed and the teachers forced me to write right handed. My mother ended up getting me 'permission' to write left handed and I have been happily ever since ;<).
I have a nice Baoer 79 Montblanc Starwalker clone that I paid under $4 for ( delivery included )
Here is someone's review http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/240914-baoer-7...
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
Is there even a point to learning cursive anymore? Seems like a waste of time if they're still teaching it to kids. I can't think of any practical purpose for it. Knowing cursive is about as useful as knowing how to use an abacus.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned felt tip pens as an alternative to fountain pens.
The Paper Mate medium point felt tip pen is my favorite writing tool. It provides a good-looking and effortless stroke and you can buy them pretty much anywhere.
Fountain pens rule. But the problem with acquiring them is that nowadays a lot of fountain pens seem to be made to look fancy and not to write well.
I learned this when I bought my first and only fountain pen last year. The difference in writing experience is amazing - I take so much more notes now, and actually carry a notebook with me.
Sustained fine grained and fluid hand movement is more difficult to learn then drawing a sequence of geometric shapes and a lot more challenging to read. School should be about understanding ideas and the value of critical thinking. Using or requiring the use of an inefficient presentation method does not help with that mission.
I suppose the mass move away from cursive writing started with the printing press. By simplifying the symbols we gained a powerful tool to spread the ideas they convey. This has just become more true with the computer which, much like the printing press, has a much easier time with distinct disconnected symbols.
I believe it's more important to learn how to write and express your ideas using all available technologies then spending time learning the particulars of one.
The hammer doesn't need to be beautiful to build a beautiful house it needs to be efficient. Writing does not need to be elegant to convey a beautiful message.
In my hometown in the 80's, elementary school kids were not allowed to use ballpoints. Fountain pens were allowed from the 3rd grade. Before that, wood-based pencils only. Even mechanical pencils were forbidden. It was said that ballpoints and mechanical pencils, especially the former, would have very negative effects on developing one's handwriting.
This was the case for Chinese, in which a good handwriting was highly regarded. As far as I know, there are no studies to prove or disprove the claim. It was true for me personally and for my classmates. I could execute many handwriting forms in pencils and in fountain pens easily while extremely hard, if ever possible, in ballpoints. After using ballpoints for a pretty long period, I couldn't write as well even if I picked up my fountain pens again. It had to take some time and some writing to get it back.
This is rubbish. Ballpoint pens had long been in existence before I went to school, and I learned cursive. My daughter's French classmates are all, today, taught superb cursive handwriting.
"And since the thin ink flows more quickly, I have to refill the pen frequently."
While technically true, that fountain pens will use more ink, keep in mind that (a) ink is cheap, (b) refilling is easy, and (c) some[1] pens have a larger ink capacity.
[1] http://asapens.in/eshop/fountain-pen/gama-ebonite-pens/gama-...
"Fight for your Write” campaign—brought up an fMRI study suggesting that writing by hand may be better for kids’ learning than using a computer."
How about writing by hand ON a computer?
For me is totally stupid to teach kids to type on a keyboard, when in the present and near future you could use other faster and better means for writing, like this speech recognition I am using now or stenotype.
The other day I saw a friend using a new prototype of a new digital stenotype on a maker space and I was sold instantly. This is the future.
But children need to learn how to draw, and train their hands in precise manipulation. If you lose handwriting training when you are kid you also lose the ability of doing precise work with your hands as your brain will prune the neural connections with your hand as you don't use it.
You can do that on a computer. Today we have affordable galaxy notes. I use an expensive Cinqiq, that will become much more affordable in the future. Training kids looking at the rear mirror makes no sense to me.
The Apple Newton was the last chance for cursive. Having two, I found that was the easiest and most accurate handwriting input. Alas, "egg freckles" rued the day and no more tech used cursive input.
This is why I started using Uniball Eye pens. They require so much less pressure, it's quite a relief for my hand. And when I picked them up, I started using cursive again in my handwriting.
I love fountain pens. Like automatic watches, they create a certain attachment and appreciation for function.
...in America.
Has anybody switched to writing on a screen as a regular thing?
What about gel ink?
I used to get very sore neck muscles, not pain in my hands.
If an essay exam final was truly 3 hours, rather than twice the length of a 1 hour midterm, I came out in agony.
I say good riddance. Leave it to people who make a job out of it. We should admit it and move on, removing stuck bits of handwriting from where it doesn't belong anymore.
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.