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As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.
by Feniks 9y ago
As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cyberferret 9y agoI am a lefty too, and actually had to change my writing style - well, my pen holding style, in primary school to adapt. If you hold the pen in a very curled grip where your palm is right next to the nib, then I can see you may have a problem, but I've found that nowadays, most modern inks dry quick enough and don't smear as easily as the inks I used in school 30-40 years ago. Also, I learned to write slower with a fountain pen, which is probably better for my mental processing. It also means I make less mistakes by focusing on my writing word by word rather than thinking 2 or 3 words ahead while writing.
- rwmj 9y agoGet a Lamy Vista "left hander", it's a great, and cheap starter pen. If you get into it, upgrade to a TWSBI, which is a little more expensive but a really lovely fountain pen.
- pjc50 9y agoObvious question: what makes it left handed?
- andygates 9y agoThe Lamy lefty nib is the only fountain pen nib that really works for me (so of course I got three and a stack of ink, dammit). It even works for the German schoolkid skinny-line flip, which a simple grind shouldn't do. I've given up thinking about how and just enjoy them!
- grimjack00 9y agoI use a TWSBI ECO, extra-fine nib with Noodler's Lexington Gray, mostly with Rhodia notebooks. Almost no smudging with that combo.
- flounders 9y agoI'm a lefty as well, and initially my hand would smear the ink as I was writing. I think I had that problem with rollerball pens to begin with, so after I did some research on proper handwriting technique, I learned I needed to hold the pen such that my hand was underneath it much like a right handed person holds it by default. It took some time to adjust but I'm more comfortable writing with any pen now than when I used to have more of a claw grip. Once you get that down, using a fountain pen will never be a problem for you and is far more of a pleasure to write with than most other writing implements will give you.
- dotancohen 9y agoWhy is that? I'm a righty, but I write in Hebrew (Right to Left) so I assume that I would have similar issues to what you face. However I have no problem writing with my fountain pens. I'm genuinely curious why many lefties have trouble with fountain pens, not trolling.
- detaro 9y agoOne thing is the smudging thing (avoided by putting the paper at an angle), another aspect is that left-to-right movements push the pen instead of pulling it, and that might be the difference to Hebrew? Do you do mostly right-to-left strokes inside Hebrew characters, or left-to-right?
- dotancohen 9y agoWhether I'm writing English or Hebrew, I tend to do the strokes in a downward fashion, in the direction of writing. So English writing goes mostly Northwest to Southeast, and Hebrew writing goes mostly Northeast to Southwest. There are two letters in Hebrew which require a significant upstroke (Aleph א, and in my handwriting Vav ו as well), but I suppose that I've perfected those over the years. Circular letters, such as O or Samech ס, start at the top and end at the top. I also use a children's fountain pen, the terrific Faber-Castell Scribolino School Fountain Pen, which I find more comfortable and more fluid than fountain pens which have cost me almost 100 Euros. I highly recommend it, you can find them for about $20-$25 on Ebay.
- TheRealPomax 9y agoThat... kind of sounds like you need to relearn how to write. Which sounds silly, but there are 100% good ways and bad ways to write (both right and left handed writers suffer from insane 'who taught you to write' hand positions). Learning how to properly hold your pen helps a lot with not smudging ink even when it's a long drying ink. And not unimportantly, a fountain pen requires writing _without_ any pressure on the pen; the ink gets drawn out simply by there being any kind of contact at all, so if you write with a fountain pen the way you're used to writing with a ballpoint pen, or pencil, both of which require pressing into the paper, you're literally doing things wrong (and probably through no fault of your own other than not having realised there might be different ways you need to write).
- derstander 9y agoThis is interesting: I'll have to look into relearning how to write. With regard to the "who taught you to write" hand positions, I wonder if the problem is worse for lefties. My kindergarten teacher actually spent time trying to get me to write with my right hand until my father wrote her a letter clarifying that I was, indeed, left-handed.
- robin_reala 9y agoThe biggest problem with left-handed fountain pen writing is that unless you adopt some horribly bent-over position you’re pushing the nib into the paper instead of dragging it across. That damages pens and leads to horribly scratchy writing, even if you can get over the constant smudging. It’s OK though, there are plenty of other writing implements - personally I chose the keyboard.
- andygates 9y agoYay for natural horribly bent-over positions!
- TheRealPomax 9y agoNo question, if you need efficient writing, keyboard every time. And I say that as someone who has plenty of fountain pens and 500+ inks.
- knob 9y agoTrying writing from right to left. That way, you leave the ink behind and don't smotch it with your hand.
- derstander 9y agoSame. My folks signed me up for a weekend calligraphy course around the same time frame (primary school). I've avoided calligraphy and fountain pens since. I avoid most pencils, too, so I don't end up with graphite all over my hand and smudges all over my paper. After a reasonable amount of experimentation I've ended up just going with Uni Jetstream 101s because they feel smoother than most ball-points but dry fast enough that I don't get ink on my hands. I played around with modding various pen pieces to assemble a franken-pen but having to trim/tape ink refills wasn't much fun. I'm always on the lookout for other recommendations from lefties. I've seen a couple in this thread already.
- acidx 9y agoI'm left-handed and I have no problems when using a fountain ink pen... if I write upside down.