How do you write? I'd like to see if choice of nib-style (Italic/stub/calligraphy versus other) correlates with choice of handwriting-style. (For purposes of this poll, I consider Italic/stub/calligraphy nibs as one category, and I consider all others as "not Italic" nibs: later on, I hope to do more detailed polls which more finely distinguish different categories of nib and style.)

To clarify your answers, please post on the board!

I generally use stub nibs because of my high angle of attack relative to the paper. I am strictly boring old Palmer schoolgirl cursive. It is so ingrained in me, I don't know how to get more flair to my writing. Sometimes an italic nib will give me more flair.

I use a non-italic nib only because I'm too lazy.
I'm waiting for a cursive italic nib from Mr. Binder so I'll see how things go with that.

My writing has been described as being Spencerian in nature with a great numer of adopted elements and the pens I use range from stubs,italics,semi flex,fully flexible, extra fine, and fine nibs.

The type of pen I use is really dependent on the task at hand and the paper I am writing on and I carry a wide range of pens with me on a daily basis.

I tend towards italics when available. My favourite Esterbrook nibs are always the x312s and x314s. Of course, I've never tried a flexible nib ...

I chose the second in the list but (expletive deleted) I meant to click on #4 - I practiced calligraphy in my teens (back to the issue of mum trying to help me improve my handwriting) and a lot of that stuck with me as my handwriting "evolved" (perhaps, devolved is more appropriate) over time. I use all sorts of nibs but my preference is an "edged" nib (my word to sum up italic/calligraphy/stub) and in recent years my writing has adopted more italic style then it had before I rediscovered FPs. But it's still pretty much a hybrid.

Most of my pens are standard, non-italic nibs.

I have five italic nib pens that I'm using somewhat more often.

As far as writing styles go, until fairly recently I would print (poorly!!) We're not even going to discuss my cursive writing.

Since December, I've been making an effort to copy the Chancery cursive found on James Pickering's website, using both standard and calligraphy nibs. In doing so, my writing has vastly improved. In fact, I was asked to fill out a membership certificate for a local service club, using my newly acquired skill. WOOHOO!

I'm now at the point that I want to obtain/grind a 1.1mm nib down to about 0.7mm to write/practice with.

I'm having a lot of fun improving my handwriting and using new pens.

While I write in several different styles, most of my writing is done at work, and I tend to write in a mix of print and italic with non italic nibs. The primary reason is because I have to usually write small, and I do not have the control (or haven't practiced enough) to write legibly in cursive at a small size. But it might be kind of circular, because if I wrote in curcive more often, I might have the control to write legibly and small. I also tend to use non italic nibs for the same reason, as you move towards fine and extra fine nibs, the change in line variation for an italic nib is less aparant to me then with a medium or bold. So I tens to go with a fine or extra fine, non-italic nib and write in a mix of print and italic because my style is really not so much of either as a mongrel of both.

Odd thing is, when I am writing personal correspondence, I tens to write with a med italic or stub and write in cursive, unless I am in a hurry, at which time I revert to print/italic (printailc?). To me, writing in cursive with a italic nib is luxury time (cuz it look so purtry!) I eventually hope to transition more to a standard italic, but finding time to practice is not always easy.

Kj

I am writing with different styles depending on mood, purpose and writing speed.
This includes all types of nibs and several possible styles.

BTW what is a calligraphic nib?

AZ

Italic or stub, I believe.

This is kinda like the "if you could use only one ink..." poll. I always have a problem with them becuase it makes you choose between items that don't capture all the nuance of the situation. What you write with is influenced by stricture of your environment, and what one writes with most often is not what one prefers to right with. It's kinda like the difference between the question "what manufacturer's pens do you have the most of" and "What pen do you most enjoy from your collection" if you see what I mean. I would wonder how much the answers would change if the question were one of preference instead of reality. Of course I realize that Kate might have been looking for some specific information, I was just chaffing cuz my writing life is constrained by my working life.
Kj

..

Engineering school and work forced me to abandon my illegible cursive for printing a "few" years ago. More recently, I've had a lot of fun, and some success, working with Getty & Dubay's Write Now and coming up with my own version of joined italic writing. I only use a non-italic nib, though.

Bill

I only use plain nib, they need to be medium or bold and very smooth and wet.

I consider fine and custom nibs scratchy, I tried them thinking they would help my huge
handwriting but they bug me to no end.

My "ideal" handwriting would be the one that Denis Richard shows in the post about Seyes paper ruling.

Unfortunately, when I am trying to keep up with my thoughts some unsightly printing pops out especially with r, s and p's. It's a constant battle to keep my nice French cursive.

Hi Anne-Sophie,

after reading your post, I tried to reproduce the cursive we were taught. Well... after 20 some years of evolution, let's say that going back to it pretty much looked like what my first attempts must have been

Denis.

I think I fit none of the above descriptions, I adjust my writing style to the nib I use..
Copperplate-like with a flex nib, italic-like with an italic or stub nib.. and ..well not sure what to call it, with a normal nib ( mostly B ).

I'm not Kate...

but I'd call it printing with an italic flavor.

I don't have a italic or stub nib (yet!) but I have attempted to model my handwriting after Getty & Dubay's style in Write Now, using normal Fine and Medium nibs. I can't wait to see how it will look with the cursive italic I plan to get soon!

Eric

I use fountain pens, almost exclusively: medium or fine nibs. As for ball points, I use them rarely: when in a hurry, when writing on poor quality paper, or for copies.

My writing style is Palmer's, occasionally combined with Peterson's.

As for ink: blue, blue black or plain black.

I use "round" (non-Italic) nibs to write a style of cursive that I originally learned in 2nd grade. My current cursive has only evolved in terms of legibility. It wasn't the Palmer method of cursive but a similar one. If I can find a scanner, I'll try to post some handwriting samples later. I do occasionally print but my grade school teachers required us to write in cursive from 3rd (4th?) grade on so I stuck with it, even through high school and college.

Now that I'm job-hunting, I can't help but wonder: Why the heck can't I get a job involved with fountain pens?! I'm not talking about just selling them. For that, I could pester the Paradise Pen store in the King of Prussia mall.

Too bad “I use a non-Italic nib and a depraved conventional ("school") cursive” isn’t on the list.

I think that’s the way it usually goes: you start to write as you were taught to do, and gradually you develop the idiosyncrasies which give your handwriting “personality”. On the one hand, this is an eclectic process; sometimes it will be possible for you to say “I took this letter from him/her, because I liked it so much”, but more often you won’t be able to tell. The other factor is sheer negligence: in trying to increase the speed of writing, certain elements get lost or assume an abstract quality. This is also very individual.

I would have voted that for myself too.

Trouble is, I can't remember what style we learnt in school. I tried to surf for some info for a while but can't seem to find anything that will jog my memory. I think it's a hybrid of some sort anyway - school, conventional, I'm not sure. It definitely requires CIA-level deciphering, whatever it is. When I get my hands on a decent colour scanner, I'll post a pic and ask the handwriting experts to help me out (if they can read it, of course).

With regards to the option above, I went for the "I use a non-Italic nib & a hybrid of printing/"school" cursive", which sounds about right so far. I've just started with a 0.9 Italic, and I quite like it, so my vote might change in the future.

I've noticed that many people in my field (software) print or scrawl in a cur-int (between cursive and printing) so that I need to squint and guess what they're writing.

The most legible handwriting in my field is print. Rarely do I see the gorgeous cursive I see here. Most of the time I see cur-int or print-sive, some 20% illegible handwriting.
I guess you could call it italic, but italic implies legibility to me.

Now an interesting poll would be our favorite fonts I like Tahoma and Arial. Not too big on serifs either. Somehow this ties into how much I like Lamy, Rotring, and other modern-style pens.

To me, Corien's handwriting looks like circle/vertical printing with some Italic joins.

Freecia notes:

" ... many people in my field (software) print or scrawl in a cur-int (between cursive and printing) so that I need to squint and guess what they're writing."

I increasingly find myself calling *legible* combinations of print & cursive styles (which often look like Italic) the "current" hand or the "currently developing" style ("current" in the dual sense of "rapid" and "now common") which comes close to Freecia's term "cur-int."
For *illegible* combinations of print & cursive (which bring a squint to the eyes and guesswork to the brain) - well, I think of these as "attempts at the newly prevailing 'current' style."

"Italic implies legibility" - usually, yes, but poor Italic does exist (and always has) even though poor writing appears far more rarely in Italic than in other styles given equal teaching/practice.

I use a stub or italic nib and round nib almost equally. My "normal" handwriting combines elements of Palmer method with some Spencerian forms. I'm a 50 something graduate of parochial schools. Daily penmanship classes were part of my school days. My Gran had also been a teacher. I learned cursive writing before I started school. I never really have learned how to print.

You're very right. My style is cribbed from here and there, and I suspect it shows (frankenwriting?), but it's fairly aesthetically pleasing. Still, I can remember precisely where I picked up certain letter forms: my lower case "e," for example, comes from both The Borrowers and the calligraphy on an early Neil Diamond album. And I've tried to adapt some letters and given them up as unsuccessful styles.

Usually I write with a plain old fine or medium gold nib. Recently I've ordered a medium cursive italic from Binder and hopefully I'll get it in the mail today. I'm cautiously optimistic that it'll give me that extra "flair" I'm looking for.

yeah, I know what you mean. I try to get some flair going

Me too, like smooth, springy and wet. I like wet for the extra lub, but annoying waiting for the ink to dry. I suppose I am not yet brave enough to go for an italic or stub since I heard they are a bit more difficult to write with smoothly and that they are inherently not as smooth as regular round nibs in M and B. I like the feel of B but often it's just too wide for everyday writing so M is a good compromise for me. F would be even better for everyday writing, but I am willing to sacrifice that for extra smoothness in a M.

Good morning all. I use standard fine nibs because I tend to write small. I actually had pretty decent handwriting in school, but when I went to college, I had to write fast to keep up with the professors. My handwriting has never been the same since.

I'm not sure. I mostly print. I prefer medium to broad nibs, but I might decide to try out a fine or XF. I actually scribble when I'm in a hurry. I hope my snailers can read my writing.

I have my own slight twist on California public school cursive, which I modified slightly again after looking through Kate Gladstone's delightful website in 2003 and 2004.

I use a rounded nib, not a stub or italic nib, because I want smoothness and I have too many other projects going on which don't allow me time to learn that beautiful chancery italic script.

My result isn't the italic or almost-italic form she advocates, but it's better than what I used to do. I can produce it consistently, clearly and quickly now, and even better with a fountain pen. I can also produce it quickly and well on a whiteboard.

Recently, some of my adult ESL students from East Asia have asked how to learn my whiteboard cursive! I point them to "American Handwriting: Slow and Easy," from Delta Publishing, which teaches more or less the same as what California public schools teach (the ones that still teach it), and I tell them to develop their own style (as long as it's still legible to literate native speakers) after mastering that one.

I connect every letter within a word, except after some uppercase initial letters.

I keep my uppercase letters as close to the block/printed form as smoothly possible, most of the time. For uppercase "I," I freely alternate between the block form and the stylized non-descending-J form. I switched to a connecting block form of uppercase gee in junior high or high school, because the uppercase California public school cursive gee always felt crazy to me.

In lowercase,
my eff and ell have loops,
the descenders of my gee and wye have loops,
the ascenders of my bee, dee and tee do not have loops,
I finish my bee off at its bottom,
I try to make the loop of my ee look slanted or horizontal rather than vertical,
my ess is the connected version of the block/printing style of the letter,
and my zee (zed outside the USA) now looks more like the block/printing style with a looped descender.

I'm still experimenting with arr, now trying the California public school cursive form with a bow toward the left on the last downstroke; this makes the whole thing look more like a shrunken uppercase arr, and that feels very reasonable.

California public school cursive lowercase bee, ee, arr, ess and zee always seemed too crazily and arbitrarily different from the block/printing forms of the letters to me, although I obediently produced them until 2003 and 2004. Thank you, Kate Gladstone!

(Edited: toned down the parenthetical comment about the name of zee/zed.)

I learned the Peterson Penmanship method of cursive when I was in the second grade, many moons ago. Peterson and Palmer are nearly identical. I could never, never, write legibly with that method. I hated to write, and I avoided it as much as I could - which was hard in pre computer days. I relearned how to write in my mid-20's, and I learned an italic style. To this day, if I try to use the cursive I learned in grade schol, it is like an evil retrogression to a scrawl that looks like a child's attempt at writing.

Hence, I use italic writing with some printing. I use mostly italic or stub nibs, but I have some lovely standard ball nibs that I do not hesitate to use, but still with my italic hand. When I must use a pencil or a ball point, I retain my italic style.

With my italic hand, writing is fun and I tend to write more because I enjoy it. I often wonder when I see the horrid penmanship of so many young people whether they might also come to enjoy writing more if they had been taught alternate writing styles. I remain absolutely incredulous that the Peterson Method is still taught in the local area schools.

What does the Peterson method look like?

Sonnet, as I indicated in my narrative, it is nearly identical to the Palmer Method. Both methods are little more than adaptations of "business writing." I regret I do not have the technical ability to post any examples. With luck, one of our compadres might post samples.

Here's an example of my writing....just started working on the Christmas letter....

My best to all (and Merry Christmas since you're viewing the first -- draft? -- page of my letter)... /:) \

Paul

Kate, thank you for this thread. It has facilitated my rethinking my approach to the Peterson Method. Until this thread, I had honestly never even considered trying a hybrid approach to cursive writing - and this from a guy who has use fountain pens for 40+ years! Duh!

There are certain letters I just cannot execute in Peterson or Palmer, like the pronoun "I." No matter how I approach that pronoun, the "I" comes out looking like I am a crazed 8-year old Dr. Jeckel. By simply using an italic "I," the whole character of a sentence changes. Likewise, using italic "r's" and "s's," and forming my "a's" and "o's" in italic fashion, gives the product on paper a pleasing character it otherwise would lack, and it is legible.

I am going to continue playing with this new toy. Thanks again.

this is an interesting topic as i have one on how to improve myself going. frank's experience has me now doubting whether i should first learn the fountain pen by improving my non-existent cursive, and then going to a chancery italic.

i take notes in court and i tend to write fast and sloppy. with this first day of fountain pen, i have tried to slow down. my print is getting better just by slowing down, i mean half as fast as my note taking, and my cursive which i never use still sucks.

frank makes a good point of forgetting cursive, learning to print using some italic characters and then i just practice mr. pickering's lettering. but then i see that copperplate cursive writing and maybe that is easier to learn

i obtained from pam a charleston waterman and some waterman florida blue ink. it dries fast and the pen does not put out a lot of ink, which i think are good characteristics for a newbie, or maybe just me, to practice.

i dont know how to do polls, but maybe someone could do one about how a newbie should start, say practice non-existent cursive and move to italic fonts, or go straight to italics or whatever. or maybe, and i dont mean to hijack this thread, append to this?

sam

Hi Sam,

I think I replied to a similar question in another thread. If you really are planning on taking notes fast, there are only two ways.

One is to learn shorthand, and use that. Disadvantage is that it is unreadbale most of the time, except to yourself, and even then if you don't convert it fast enough to readable script or a digital doc, you may not be able to read it back yourself after a while.

The other option is to learn cursive. And use that for speedy note-taking. Teh whole idea of cursive script is that you don't need to take the pen off the paper except for dotting i-s and crossing t-s and moving from one word to another. Hence it is faster than any other form of "standard" writing. Since a fountain pen in principle glides more easily over paper than a bp or similar, the fastest way to do make plain English notes (or any other western alphabet type language), which are readbale way after the fact, is to use a fountain pen and cursive script.

Now use a permanet ink, and it won't fade or wash away either .

Just to give you an example: changing from bp to fp I improved my cursive writing speed in exam mode, medium sized script, from about 3-4 A4-pages an hour, to > 7 of those pages an hour, whereas I can't sustain the bp writing speed continuously, because my hand and arm start cramping badly. No such problems with a fountain pen.

Now, if you just want to make notes: I can keep up with a normal speaker, or a medium fast speaker, provide he stops occasionally to think or breathe. Of course, in this case I would not be able to partake in any discussions.

Of course, YMMV, but I don't think you can't obtain and attain these speeds by printing and/or using any calligraphic script, certainly not for long periods of time.

This is why I suggested the route of cursive first and calligraphy next, although you could practice both. Practicing calligraphy will have an effect on cursive handwriting as well: it tends to become neater.

HTH, warm regards, Wim

In my experience and observation, those forms of cursive that permit lifting to dot/cross "i/j/t/x" do indeed permit faster writing than the usual North American styles that forbid these (and other) pen-lifts within words.
However, most of us can write faster still by also making certain pen-lifts that I think the Mad Dutchman does not make - namely, by moving the the pen of the paper where needed to avoid all curved joins (such as the join in "sc" or "pa" or "gh") because lifting the pen allows a straight line here (shortest, therefore quickest, distance between two points) instead of a curve. A straight-line "air-join" goes so much faster than an equally legible curved-line "paper-join" that the writer saves far more time than the time spent in moving the pen slightly off the paper as needed to join straight in the air like this.
Other joins (straight-line joins such as we see in "an" and "on") do not benefit from lifting off the paper, since they have little or no curve that one could save time by straightening. So, in those cases ("an/on" and the like) one saves time by remaining *on* the paper.

Kate Gladstone - www.learn.to/handwrite - www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

Those who feel curious to see what Peterson looks like can visit its site at http://www.peterson-handwriting.com

The last time I talked with any Peterson officials, they denied that anyone anywhere does poorly with that method. In 2002 or 2003, a few years after my last talk with a Peterson person, I confess I smiled to myself when I read on the Peterson web-site (then later in a few news-stories on handwriting) that the company had discontinued its 75-year-old handwriting competition because of the uniformly execrable quality of such entries as it had received that year. Peterson teachers and former users/students of Peterson Handwriting tell me that the company continues to believe that Peterson produces uniformly good penmanship - I wanted to ask current Peterson users about this I've never managed to find any present users except /a/ company officials and /b/ the schoolchildren to whose schools/districts the company officials sell the program. Other than company officials I've never (so far) found anyone using Peterson past the age at which his/her school stops giving handwriting lessons.

A funny thing - somewhere on the Peterson site, you'll find a "forum" about handwriting, put there ostensibly to let people share info, ask questions, etc. I put "forum" in quotes (and use the word "ostensibly" too) because, if you go there and post anything unfavorable to Peterson (bad experiences with the program, or whatever) it magically disappears within a day or so.

I marked that I use non-italic nibs and "school" handwriting, even though my handwriting is now nowhere near what I was taught in school. Mine is more slanted, typically, along with various other differences. The handwriting I was taught is the work of demons and the teachers for the most part didn't really care how anything looked. I blame today's teachers and perhaps even the uninspired type of handwriting for my peers' horrible handwriting, if they remember it at all.

I just checked out the Peterson web site. Definitely not what I learned in grade school and for that, I'm actually grateful

What influenced my handwriting the most
Finally found it. If you click the above link and scroll through the book's excerpts until about page 8, you'll find the illustration of a letter to Samantha from her friend, Nelly. Believe it or not, this illustration of a fictional letter probably influenced my handwriting more than anything else.
Background: Changes for Samantha by Valerie Tripp is [originally] the 6th book in a series from the American Girl empire, now owned by Mattel. Since the 1980s, American Girl has sold historical fiction for 3-12? year olds with correlating dolls, accessories, etc. The "Samantha" collection focuses on a fictional 9-year old girl living in Victorian-influenced America (circa 1904). Other collections include books and dolls about WWII, the Great Depression, Civil War, Colonial Williamsburg/Revolutionary War, etc. At the end of these chapter books is a section going into more detail about what life was like during that particular era. For instance, the end section of Changes for Samantha details how a girl Samantha's age would eventually be able to vote, and go to college-- for the likely purpose of finding a husband. So I'm guessing this letter from Nelly serves as an example of Copperplate script from an early 20th-century working class child. Notice the entrace serifs on "a," "c," "g," etc. that are typical of Copperplate writing.
When I learned how to write cursive in 1991 [I was almost 8 years old], I learned a style that seems very similar to the above example, with the exception of the entrance serifs. After reading the Samantha books over the next few years, I started adding said serifs to my handwriting and they've stuck, for the most part. I don't think my teachers were too happy about that but beyond giving me "satisfactory" grades in handwriting [as opposed to "good" or "very good"], they didn't do too much else.
So there you have it-- I learned to write from both my 2nd and 3rd grade teachers, and from the "Samantha" books. I've done some work in the "Write Now!" copybook but I'm not really feeling the whole "italic" thing. Maybe I just need to give it more time since I'm still on the printing portion and haven't progressed to cursive italic yet.
And in case you're wondering, I went to all this trouble because I lack a scanner and I just can't seem to take good pictures of my handwriting with a digital camera.

Oh, and I apologize that the writing "sample" is so depressing.

[QUOTE=KateGladstone,Feb 15 2006, 03:07 PM]
I've never managed to find any present users except /a/ company officials and /b/ the schoolchildren to whose schools/districts the company officials sell the program. Other than company officials I've never (so far) found anyone using Peterson past the age at which his/her school stops giving handwriting lessons.

This is sad! However, I must say that, even though I'm a Palmer student (back in the 50's), I had the chance to know the Peterson Method. I've been practicing it for the past 4 or 5 years, and it has greatly improved my handwriting.

As a physician, I have to write fast, sometimes on poor quality papers. Peterson's is a great asset in this conditions. As with everything else, practice is the clue.

I remember, back in grade school, the Nuns taught us, and wrote with, the Palmer Method. Such beautiful handwriting! Not to mention the beauty of the page itself, with a readable, understandable penmanship! Now, I believe, if they could do it, so can I (us), don't you think so?

Anyway, handwriting, whichever the style or method, is very therapeutic. It releives tension and stress, particularly when done just for kicks...

This is a sample of my writing style.

I'm going to a nib-meister in Houston next week to see if he can tweak my Pelikan and possilby a couple other pens.

Suggestions on what sort of nibs I should look at?

I seem to be drawn to the more rounded ones rather than the more angular. Is the middle sample what y'all would call a 'stub'? It's very rounded. . .

I have to write so quickly during my usual workday that I can border on the illegible frequently.

I'm happy to write with both an Italics calligraphy nib and a non-calligraphy nib. I use both types just as much.

So my handwriting is a hybrid of conventional cursive and italics cursive.

Also, i'm one of those people who hold the pen with wrist hooked and i hold it in such a way that my handwriting changes everytime i write

Popped in again!

This thread looks interesting. I had never been much concerned about my choice of nibs or my writing style.

First: My writing style. I don't know how to describe it. To me it seems to be a rather sloppy variant of school cursive. Most people tell me it looks great but IS unreadable. But: My writing style hasn't significantly changed during the last 30 years. I had shown two examples elsewhere in the FPN; I cannot remember where ...

Second: Nibs. I do like O-nibs. Montblanc Noblesse: OB. Kaweco Sport: OB. Pelikan M800: OM. But I am also writing with the conventional types. Old Montblanc (school!): M. Vintage Pelikan 100N: F. Sheaffer Touchdown: F. Pilot VP (recent): B. Pilot VP (old style): F. Nibs do not have the slightest influence on my writing style, sole exception being the size of my handwriting ...

Sometimes I switch over to a Pentel Fude Pen. It is my absolute favourite when I am practising Japanese (a kind of reanimation - I began with learning Japanese nearly 30 years ago, but I was forced to give up, because I had to change my employer for a while). A fude is the most flexible pen (in reality it's a brush) you can imagine. Not very adapted to our western way of writing but wonderful for chinese and japanese characters, if you are a calligrapher (I am not!).

So much for the moment,
kind nightly greetings from bad old Europe,

Hans-Peter

ps: Maybe I should prepare some newer examples of my handwriting, including something written with the fude (although experts in chinese/japanes writing might kill me).