I have crappy handwriting. Using an average pencil or pen requires a lot of manual force and concentration to produce attractive looking handwriting.
Yet…I’ve received a couple of nice pens as gifts. Both pens seem to weigh heavier, and have higher quality ink, than your average BIC pen. I find that I’m able to write nicer with these pens.
So what’s the deal? Do higher quality pens provide higher quality handwriting ability? Or is it some artistic aspect that provides steadier wrist control (or something)?
I have crappy handwriting, but if I concentrate, I write with crisp, legible handwriting. My inkstrokes end up clear and concise.
However, if I have a quality writing utensil, the weight of the instrument and the quality of the ink helps me write easily. I don’t need to press hard on the paper, which means my hand does not get tired, which means my handwriting maintains a clearness that it might not otherwise maintain.
I have other, clearer, thoughts, but I’m have drunk and impatient, so hurry up and understand me already, goddammit.
I have crappy handwriting, but if I concentrate, my handwriting is still crappy.
I have in the past used a Cross fountain pen and it still looks like an inky spider was doing a tango on the page while thinking about Jackson Pollock.
I’m glad you have good experience with a quality writing implement.
I think the type of pen/pencil makes a difference, but expensive is not necessarily better. Some cheap pens make my writing nicer, some expensive ones make it bad.
I can sometimes read my own handwriting. Using a fountain pen, and really concentrating hard on the task… I can make it look really nice; not actually legible tho, but the way the line thickens and narrows looks really… artistic.
For the healthy adult the only pen that makes long term writing less cramping is one of the rare cheap ones that are at least 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Anything skinnier is too narrow for gripping in a larger adult hand. Once you get older and have some hand problems you may need even larger diameter pens or they will fall out of your hand. It still didn’t improve my hand writing in any way though, as for me that can only be improved for me by writing extremely slow.
I find that if I’m writing with a crappy pen, I don’t much care how my writing looks, but part of that is that I really hate writing with crappy pens. I like writing with a decent thin ballpoint click pen & I think my writing improves with its use.
I have the worst handwriting in the world. This has been confirmed by several independent experts. It’s bad.
I asked my wife this question. NO came the response, quick as a tennis return. Short of an arm transplant, years of intense physical re-training, and being banned from using a keyboard for the rest of my life, nothing is going to help me.
It’s practice. We used both ballpoints and fountain pens in school and we had to practice, practice, practice. It was a form of art so to speak. If you notice old Peanuts cartoons, Sally and Charlie Brown are always practicing their penmenship.
Whether or not you write better with your fancy pen I don’t know, but a very cheap pen would require a different hold than a fancy expensive one. But all this means is you’d have to practive with the cheapo one. Eventually you’d get the nice writing out of the cheap one.
I get a lot of compliments on how neat my writing is, but it was barely legible when I was in middle and high school. Three things helped me improve: 1. I’m no longer graded on spelling, so there’s no incentive to be sloppy to cover up possibly putting the wrong vowel in a word 2. I got a whole lot of practice in college writing reams of notes at what were often real desks for left-handed people (auditorium classes still sucked, though). 3 the second one that might help people here - I switched to fine point pens.
Since Markxxx covered #2, let’s talk about #3. Medium pens are the enemy of neat writing. They release too much ink, and that tends to blob and smear just enough to thicken your lines and make them messier. Buy yourself some fine point pens and see if that helps. I like the kind you can buy a pack of two of for a dollar (pilot, pentel etc) and as Harmonious Discord suggested, they’re also less skinny than a bic though they have a diameter of .4" rather than the suggested .75" but hey, I have really small hands for an adult* so they work for me.
the average lengths of adult hands are: 7.44" for men, and 6.77" for women. Mine are 6" even.
I’m in the nothing is going to help camp. I have tried a variety of pens and pencils and the best I’ve used are the ultra think mechanical pencils because I don’t break the lead.
My handwriting looks like the drunken scratchings of a chicken on a bender, and it wouldn’t make a difference if you gave me a diamond pen with a moon rock nib. My problem’s not motor control, it’s that I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to handwriting. My hand just sort of forgets where it’s been and where it’s going because my brain doesn’t really engage in the process. I eventually get to the end of a word, but the path in between might be a little indeterminate.