This reasoning, and that prompting the (sensible) question
is based on technological and economics-of-materials imperatives for the practice of shorthand, which no doubt can come into play, but are really irrelevant.
Transcribers of the wealthiest politicians of classical Rome–and government money is never lacking–knew and used a complex system of abbreviated notation for the same reason everyone else in all literate cultures requiring hand transcription, whether on the fly dictation-to-text or copying mss. to mss. at a desk: ease and efficiency.
I honestly wasn’t considering shorthand when I posed my question, but to address the OP’s problem of having a scenario in which someone can get 10 words/dip. Perhaps if he considered the paper type he could get to where he needs to be.
So when reporters attended parliamentary sessions to take shorthand notes (as depicted in Dickens’s David Copperfield), they had to pause every six or so words to dip their pens? I hadn’t thought about that aspect. Kudos to them for keeping up with scratchy pens and frequent pauses for more ink.
Depends on a lot of factors. The cut of the nib, the thickness of the ink, the angle of the board you’re writing on, and what material you’re writing on. Parchment and paper will behave very differently, and within those categories different papers will have different qualities and different types and preparations of parchment will also react different. Traditional iron gall inks are usually quite thin and will freely flow onto the surface, so you tend to write on a more vertical surface to restrict that as much as you can. A single cut tip will hold less ink than a tip with a long double cut. And, you’ll find that each individual quill will act different. I’ve had some tips that were poorly cut that I could barely get a letter out of, but then a few minor changes and fixes, and I could get two lines. Also, the size of your letters and the style of hand makes a huge difference. I tend to write in a very blocky gothic hand, but I generally use the size featured in the Giant Bible of Mainz. Despite the impressive size of the pages, the letters were formed on about a 7mm pitch and pretty small. A thinner italic or copperplate style is going to use much different ink amounts than a blocky textura.
To answer the OP: Assuming you’re running the alphabet through once majuscule and once miniscule, you might get through both with one dip, but i would say unlikely due to the amount of ink the majuscule letters take. I’ve had some instances where I can get two lines of text out of one dip, but those are rare enough that I notice them. I would say my average is a single line, 7mm line spacing, gothic textura, and about 4.5 inches long for the line spacing.
The one thing you’ll notice over time with a quill pen is that if you’re not paying attention to how hard you’re pressing, you tend to widen the tip quickly as you go. This happens regardless, but you can speed it up until you learn to control yourself a bit better. With the resilience of modern writing implements, it’s very easy to accidentally press too hard. You need to use the quill more as a brush than a pencil or ballpoint.
Also, a lowercase c with a line above it is still used as a symbol meaning “with”; it comes as a straightforwards (well, as straightforwards as any of this gets) abbreviation of the Latin word cum, which means with.
(Maybe modern nurses don’t use it, but my mom certainly does.)
Abbreviations, for sure, but beyond that, the modern reader would need practice reading, for example, Elizabethan secretary hand, let alone older manuscripts, simply because it is old-fashioned compared to whatever script, if any, is taught in school today.
I agree with Calamus that quills should not be that bad; something is wrong if you are getting only a couple of words out every dip.
I think that abbreviations were not so much about the limitations of dip pens but the fact that everything was written, often dictated, and people can speak much faster than writing.
Note that “calamus” refers to a reed pen, especially known in Arabic calligraphy. I am not sure how much ink a reed pen is supposed to hold per dip- can’t say I have ever tried it- but I bet she or he can fill us in.
I am very much not an expert, but I can probably answer some of those questions. First of all, make sure your metal nibs are clean and not greasy when you draw or write with them, especially a new one that may come with oil on it. And after you dip it but before you put pen to paper, touch the nib to the glass to get rid of any big drop of ink that might blob your writing.
As for taking a dip pen with you, the nibs come off the holder, so you can easily fit a dozen of them in a tiny plastic box or canister. Unlike a fountain pen or biro, but like a quill, you still need a bottle of ink to dip into as you write, but those tiny bottles of ink they sell nowadays are small enough to double as inkwells (I even saved an old Mont Blanc bottle with a convenient hump inside that can serve as both a bottle and inkwell), or you can just use any small jar- just make sure it has a secure screw top if you actually propose to walk around with it loose in your bag…
ETA I just looked at a couple of bottles of drawing ink and the small ones say 1/3 fl. oz.; you could take a dozen different colors with you in a cigar box if you really wanted
