Italic nibs and direction of thickest line

[Stephen-I-am]

I'm enjoying working through the "Write Now" book by Getty and Dubay. I'm finding it takes some practise to unlearn the looped cursive I was taught in elementary school.

 

Looking at an example of cursive italic written with an "edged pen", I was surprised to see that a horizontal stroke, as when crossing a "t", was wide whereas a 45 degree diagonal left-to-right stroke was narrow.

 

What kind of italic nib does this? It works very well with this style of writing since the diagonal lines just join letters but the information lies in the thicker body of the letter itself.

 

Stephen

[DrPJM1]

Italic nibs have thick verticals and thin horizontals unless you rotate the pen in your hand to make the thick/thin linesw at your will.

[Stephen-I-am]

After doing a bit more digging, I see that cursive italics come in oblique versions. From the article on richardspens.com, "When used by a right-handed person, an italic will generally make strokes that are of roughly equal width in both the vertical and horizontal directions; strokes from the upper right to the lower left will be thinner, and strokes from the upper left to the lower right will be thicker".

 

As you aluded to DrPJM1, you'd have to rotate the pen to get the effect, and this nib is designed to be rotated.

 

It seems to me that this nib will really show off a cursive italic writing style to best advantage. I like the thin diagonals and thick horizontals (for "t" crossing, dashes, etc.).

 

Stephen