I’m obviously afflicted, so I’m not trying to be sanctimonious, but shitty handwriting is an epidemic. Some blame sub-standard education, some blame computers I blame shitty pens: ball point pens. There is no such thing as a good ballpoint pen— sure there are gel roller ball whatchamacallits that work well enough when they are brand new, but they start wearing out and or clogging up pretty quickly, and they work best when held at an unaturaly steep angle. What’s infuriating about all this is that the only main reason that ballpoint gained any traction in the pen world (besides its various cheap and disposable iterations) is that a ballpoint pen is what you need to use when you need to press hard so you can write hard on carbon paper. When was the last time you wrote on carbon paper?
Before the ascendancy of the ballpoint the tool of choice was the fountain pen: essentially a steel dip pen with a built in reservoir. Prior to the 1930’s a lot of fountain pens had flexible nibs in the way that dip nibs for drawing do today. These pens are not made today, partly because of the carbon paper issue, and partly because they just require old fashioned skill and care to use properly. However even modern non-flexible fountain pens are superior to ballpoints in so far as they are durable and glide over the page with a minimum of pressure. You can pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a fountain pen. Part of this is that the best tips for fountain pens are made of precious metals. The Riviere PTR- 200 is not made of precious metals, and it costs a whopping 2 bucks. It’s sold at Yoko Yaya, AKA Diazo the Japanese dollar store. It’s not perfect: the pocket clip falls off easily and is basically useless, the plastic barrel feels kind of slimy, but it writes as well, or nearly as well, as pens that cost 30 times more. The only serious down side is that the ink is not waterproof at all, and it’s not very black— sort of grungy grey. However the pen uses standard cartridges so you could conceivably replace it with some nice carbon ink. For casual sketching or note taking, or both you can’t really go wrong— it’s worlds better than a nasty ball point, and it’s 2 bucks!
Before the ascendancy of the ballpoint the tool of choice was the fountain pen: essentially a steel dip pen with a built in reservoir. Prior to the 1930’s a lot of fountain pens had flexible nibs in the way that dip nibs for drawing do today. These pens are not made today, partly because of the carbon paper issue, and partly because they just require old fashioned skill and care to use properly. However even modern non-flexible fountain pens are superior to ballpoints in so far as they are durable and glide over the page with a minimum of pressure. You can pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a fountain pen. Part of this is that the best tips for fountain pens are made of precious metals. The Riviere PTR- 200 is not made of precious metals, and it costs a whopping 2 bucks. It’s sold at Yoko Yaya, AKA Diazo the Japanese dollar store. It’s not perfect: the pocket clip falls off easily and is basically useless, the plastic barrel feels kind of slimy, but it writes as well, or nearly as well, as pens that cost 30 times more. The only serious down side is that the ink is not waterproof at all, and it’s not very black— sort of grungy grey. However the pen uses standard cartridges so you could conceivably replace it with some nice carbon ink. For casual sketching or note taking, or both you can’t really go wrong— it’s worlds better than a nasty ball point, and it’s 2 bucks!
