I am old fashioned enough to recall using a fountain pen at school. It’s a habit that stuck. My current one is a Lamy 2000 and a beautiful thing it is, too. Simple, elegant, understated lines that are easy on the eye and smooth on the page – it is an example of classic design where form follows function. When I take it out to write, people are surprised that I use one, so rare has the fountain pen become. This is something bemoaned by Rowan Pelling in the tellytubbygiraffe today. Mind you, my pen doesn’t improve the quality of my handwriting by much. It is still something of a scrawl, which would displease Pelling.
Handwriting is as distinguishing a mark of personality and aptitude as a person’s voice, manners and qualifications. My reverence for the power of the hand-inked word is so great that I could never love a man whose script was diabolical. The men I know feel just as passionately about a woman’s hand. That’s why fountain pens make perfect tokens of love.
When I ran my own office, the first thing I would examine when a CV arrived was the handwriting on the envelope. If it was an elegant flow of dark ink, it leapt to the top of the pile; but if there was an ugly scrawl of Biro then out it went.
Those of us with bad handwriting are not necessarily the victims of the biro. I was taught handwriting at school – my generation was one of the last. But, I have always suffered the problem of my thoughts out-pacing my hand, with the latter scraping across the page dropping letters and sometimes words in its haste to keep up. If I tried to write neat, elegant script, I would lose the train of thought.
That scrawl, so despised by Pelling and her agent friend is evidence of intelligence, not of ignorance or carelessness. My scrawl, though, is at least in flowing ink. Besides, if I want to write flourished cursive script that is a delight to look at, I’ll get out my calligraphy pens and Chinese stick ink. But that is drawing, not writing and the words and their placement are planned before the pen touches the page.
Rowan can stir her beans over my fire any time she likes.
My hideously expensive Parker with an italic nib has helped me out many a time. I taught myself painfully and over time to mimic (and then surpass) the script of an (artistic) friend of mine. Regular without being anal,pleasing to the eye without being contrived,flowing but controlled and above all supremely LEGIBLE.
Agree with Longrider on this though. If I pick up a biro and make a note in a hurry I revert to a scrawl.
Much as I hate both of them, it is an interesting exercise to contrast Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s handwriting.
Go on. You know you want to.
http://www.handwriting.org/main/samples/tblair.htm
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2720283/Prime-Minister-Gordon-Brown-couldnt-even-get-our-name-right.html
Ah, the fountain pen, something I would dearly love to be able to write with, but which remains impractical due to being left handed – splodgeness abounds.
Have you tried a left-handed nib?
I used to use a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck in the 1980s. Back in those days, when I was a schoolmaster, I had beautiful pellucid handwriting. Unfortunately all that changed when I switched career to IT, first as a trainee software engineer, and now I feel far more at home with a keyboard. 20 years of keyboard use has made my handwriting scratchy and illegible, even to me. Also I get a cramp in the wrist if I write by hand more than 3 or 4 sentences at a go. Bummer.
I’ve still got the Meisterstuck in a drawer somewhere but I haven’t used it since the early 1990s.