A very dear friend gave me a fountain pen for the holiday. It’s pretty basic, but balances well and has good ink flow. I am left-handed, and although the manufacturer insists that left-handed, people can use these pens, and my friend is left-handed and uses one, Ican’t figure out how not to utterly smear everything.I’m writing. My hand posture is not hooked over the line and it is uncomfortable to hold my hand in that position for any length of time. Even when I do so, however, I still smear the ink when I move down to the next line. My normal hand posture also smears the ink, even if I tip my hand a little more under the line.
This is with a medium nib. It looks like I can buy an extra fine nib online. I also can try different paper, although I really like the paper, I keep my journal on very much.
Frankly, I can’t see how anybody could write with this thing without smearing the ink all over. It might be a little worse as a lefty, but I don’t see how a right-handed person wouldn’t have the same problem one line later.
I don’t have any advice, but I can commiserate. I’m a southpaw, and would love to be able to use a fountain pen on a regular basis, but it has never worked for me. Alas! The cruelty!
The only lefty method that I’ve seen that doesn’t smear the ink (or the pencil lead) is to hold your hand underneath what you’re writing, with the pad 90 degrees, top away from your hand.
I’m lefty and I just don’t use pencils or gel pens, etc., because I write with my hand to the left of the pen and just smear as I go. In truth, I hardly write anything anymore.
The writing motion isn’t symmetrical – lefties are pushing the nib, not pulling it. So in addition to the smudge problem, some pens are more likely to catch and cause spotting when used left-handed.
Yep, as another lefty, I can commiserate with the OP. I remember in school, after writing with a pencil all day, the entire side of my left hand being gray with pencil graphite.
Another way is to choke up on the pen a bit and hold your hand so it’s above the paper, not resting on it. This will cause fatigue faster and lessen control, but it might be a little less awkward than RitterSport’s method (or it might be more awkward, YMMV).
I’m a hooked lefthander, so I’ve never even tried to use a fountain pen. Yes, I wouldn’t be able to pull the nib as required. Even writing on a whiteboard is difficult for me, because I need to keep my hand off the surface to avoid smearing.
Not that I can’t, but I don’t keep my journal in either of those. I can also write in mirror script, but it’s hard to re-locate things or write creatively when it’s not in L-to-R English.
I know there are strategies that left-handed people use, but I’m afraid I personally can’t say more than that. I can suggest a possible resource, fountainpennetwork dot com is a chat board, like this one (different hardware, very different rules, no pit, no politics, no religion). If you search (upper right corner) on “left-handed” you might find some useful threads (I actually found 122 pages of threads listed, so you may want to use trial-and-error to narrow the search). (eta: the search engine on that board is not good, it would probably be easier to search using Google.)
I understand there is a YouTube channel called Scrively which has tutorials, and since he is left-handed they might also be useful.
While we’re summoning posters, I don’t know that @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness is actually a lefty versus just has a cool username, but they’re also a teacher of IIRC youngish kids so almost certainly has experience with helping lefties learn to operate writing tools.
