I have read a lot about the best way to hold a pen as well as using your arm rather than your fingers when writing, but I have not read much about how your writing hand contacts the paper. Specifically, can any one comment on the most efficient way to stabalize your hand while writing? Does you pinky finger touch the paper? the heel of your hand? Light pressure? Not so light pressure? Pinky finger curled or extended? etc....

I started thinking about this when I observed a fellow lettering a store window freehand. He was using a bar to rest his hand on which attached to the window with suction cups.

Thanks for your input!

I explain it (accompanied by photographs/diagrams) on my web page .....

http://jp29.org/itbasics.htm

Hi EdelmaK,

I hold my fountain pens exactly like James, and have been doing so ever since I was taught cursive writing at primary school with a dip pen .

And just like in his photographs, my pinky rests on the desk or paper, my ringfinger is partly supported by it, and my middle finger again supported partly by the ring finger. I hold the pen very much the same way, just that it looks slightly differently, because my pens are a bit wider in girth than the pen in James' example.

HTH, warm regards, Wim

Great info, as always, JP! THANKS.

Follow-up question. In cursive writing, when writing a long word, does your hand slide across the paper as your are writing or do you pick up your hand to move it?

Jerry

Hi Jerry,

With any word written my hand slides across. Even with every letter it slides across. I have actually been watching things more carefully over the last few days, and I find I don't really move my fingers at all when writing, unless I am playing with the pen. My wrist moves a little, but by far the most movement is in the lower and upper arm (and shoulder as a consequence). And the wrist really only moves to dampen the consequences of slight misalignment when making larger movements with upper and lower arm. I am quite amazed to find this out, btw.

Anyway, HTH, warm regards, Wim

Just sliding it's way through all writing, and barely touching the paper. If you need to pick up your hand, your are most likely finger-writing, your wrist advancing your hand, and your arm immobile most of the time.

Ok, I can't help but wondering but am I the only weird one around here.

As far as I can dell from descriptions, I'm a "finger" writer. I do rest my hand on the table as I write and my hand does move as I write (I don't have to pause to move my hand).

I've tried the other method talked about, but after months of trying my writing quality still looks worse than that of my 4 year old nephew and after about 5 minutes the back of my sholder and upper arm ache and burn so bad I have to stop.

I can finger write for hours with no pain and much much nicer quality.

Am I the only one?

Random

Definitely not. I don't remember who said it, but I think most of us at or under middle age (for varying ages of middle age ) probably finger write. I attribute that to lack of training at an early age in writing with fountain pens. I cannot remember ever using a fountain pen in school. It is only recently that I discovered them. Though, they do allow me to produce much nicer writing, it is not yet at the easy stage. Keep in mind that this is a new activity using muscle groups in a manner they are not used to. That will require getting the muscles in tone for the new movements and building endurance and speed. That will take time and practice. I have been practicing for a little while now and still find my muscles tightening after writing for short amount of time. With continued practice, the duration will increase and it will be become more of a normal activity instead of a new one.

I hear what you say, but when I say months i mean around 7+ months of every day practicing.
In addition, I do a lot of physical work and have pretty good muscle tone in my upper arms and shoulders (now if I could only say the same for my rear end )

What I don't have, however, is any ability for fine control in those muscle groups. I can make big wavy lines, circles, squiggles, etc using that form with no problems. I'm unable to form letters and the more I try, the more it hurts.

Random

Random,
Sometimes, the current tone of the muscles can actually get in the way of finer control. Consider a body builder starting ballroom dance. The muscles may be in great shape, but not have the finer control dance requires. Writing can be similar. It is a much finer grained activity than moving or lifting things and uses muscles in a different way.

If you a using lined paper, which I do, then the relationship of nib width to line spacing also makes a difference in text quality. If I try to write within a college rule line, even with a fine nib, it does not look very nice at all. It looks much nicer if I use two lines for a character height and then write very slowly. Right now, I am more at a painting speed than a writing speed and have to very deliberately form each character. Even though I have been doing fairly finely controlled hand/arm activity for many, many years (computer programmer, mouse, keyboard, PDA stylus, etc.), I still have trouble when I try to make the fountain pen control finer than I am ready for.

On James Pickering's Basics page there is an example of a 'double lined' writing device, two pens taped together. Perhaps practicing with very large letters may help to establish finer control and identify movements which are causing problems. If that works, gradually work towards a smaller text size. Another tool that may help with this is the Lined Paper PDF Generator. You can generate wider lines to start with and gradually work towards narrower lines. Or, as the image on James' page, you can just use a whole lot of lines for a character height. More lines may actually be better because it will have positions for the top, bottom, middle, ascenders, descenders, etc.

Hi random,

You're probably trying to hard. And you're probably already quite far with it if your hand moves with the line of writing. The only thing you need to try is not move your fingers, that's all (ok, I know it is probably not that easy ). Rather than trying to move your arm, shoulder and hand, try to keep your fingers still, and only use them for holding the pen. Just try to concentrate on one thing at a time. Holding your fingers still is probably going to give you the easiest transition, becasue you don't need to cramp so much.

Also, if you find it difficult to write smaller characters, just make them big first, there is no rule against that! Use a B or BB nib if you like, if that makes it easier. It means you only get few words on a piece of paper, but it becomes very readable, and is great for practicing, IMO. And gradually, and only if you are so inclined, you could move on to finer points and finer writing.

HTH, warm regards, Wim

I thought I might post a couple images and some better explanations on what it is I'm doing.

I apologize for the image quality. My scanner is misbehaving so I snapped a couple quick pictures with my camera.



This is the average speed/note taking hand I've used since childhood (with some minor variations over time).
While writing this way I rest my hand on the table, move my fingers, wrist and elbow (if what I'm doing is large enough to require it) and guide my hand along with my upper arm as I write.
This has always been comfortable for me and I can write like this for hours with no problems. While not perfect (I know I have some problems, like my lower case R), I've never had any complaints with it either




This is how my writing looks when keeping my fingers/wrist stationary and controlling my movements with my upper arm/shoulder. I've been practicing this method pretty much every day (with a few exceptions here and there) for the last 7 or so months.
After about 5 minutes of this my upper arm and shoulder start to burn and ache.


FYI - the ratios aren't exact in my images. The line spacing in the second example is 3x larger than the spacing in my first example.

Both samples were written with my Namiki VP fine point using Noodler's Seqoia ink.

Random

The main reason for using the arm/shoulder rather than the fingers/wrist is to properly use chisel edged nibs. You appear to be using a pointed or regular tipped nib fountain pen. If that is all you intend to use and are satisfied with your finger/wrist generated writing, I would suggest not changing anything.

I think another factor that should be considered when attempting to learn muscular motion is finger alignment.

As mentioned on Mr. P's website regarding pen hold, the last 3 fingers on the hand should form a 'rest pad'.

The middle finger is supported by the ring finger , which in turn is supported by the pinkie (as wimg said). My left hand is able to form this effortlessly, thus enabling a comfortable pen hold. I only have to work on the muscular movement, which I'm on the path to developing (for left hand)

Things are more complicated with the right hand (Used my right hand for penmanship till recently). When I was 16, I adopted a poor pen hold for more than a year (3 fingers on top putting pressure to stabilize pen with no support underneath). I'm thinking this had long-term consequences - my right hand's finger alignment is now different from that of the left. The major difference seems to be the pinkie (little finger). Observed under the condition of no pressure, the left hand's pinkie slants in towards the ring finger ; while the little finger on the right hand points straight down. I'm thinking the alignment of the right pinkie was changed due to the poor posture while the one on the left hand is the correct one.

Now, I'm unable to comfortably form the 'support pad' with the right hand although I have well developed muscular motion. As a result of which I'm still unable to write effectively using the right hand.

Moral of story : Poor posture kills.

I'm thinking of seeing a hand therapist or something, have it splinted (?). Does anybody know of any corrective tool for such cases?

Regards