The Fountain Pen Blog

A year or two ago, my fiance (who was my boyfriend at the time) told me he was trying to find a better pen for taking notes in class. He was in college at the same school as me, studying engineering while I studied English. For him, it was important to have a pen that could write quickly but neatly, as he often had to jot down tiny numbers and symbols that had to be easy to differentiate from each other. I perked up at the idea of trying out different pens to discover which ones we liked best, so that’s exactly what we did, landing first on InkJoy pens, then Pilot G2s, and finally fountain pens.

Yes, in case you’re wondering, the fountain pen in my banner is mine. I used to bring it to class sometimes. I’m open about my nerdiness, folks. (That’s how this blog got its name.)

I know they look fancy–even a bit pretentious. They’re old-fashioned, which is something I enjoy about them, but there are 21st-century reasons to use them too. Refilling them with ink when they run out is definitely greener than using and discarding ballpoint pens. Just think of all plastic we waste doing that every year! Plus, the ink often comes in glass containers (I use Noodler’s ink, which comes in 3 oz glass bottles) and I believe glass is recyclable in most areas, whereas with plastic it can be hit or miss depending on the type of plastic and what recycling facilities exist in your area. Even better, I’ve found that one jar of ink goes a long way. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve refilled my pens, and I’m still on my first container of ink.

Besides, they just write so smoothly! The first time I tried one, I couldn’t believe how easily it slid across the page. They’re comparable to gel pens in that sense, however there is the added difficulty of making sure you’re holding them properly. If you tilt a fountain pen the wrong way, it becomes impossible to write with, so that is something to consider if you have a habit of holding your pens in an unusual way. I actually don’t mind that terribly because it’s forced me to write properly, which is probably better for my hand since I tend to write a lot.

Another great thing about fountain pens is that they don’t have to make the simple lines of uniform thickness that ball point pens make. The shape of a fountain pen’s nib (the pen tip) can really change the way that it writes and give you some fun options. One of the fountain pens I have has an italic nib, which means that instead of coming to a point, the tip of the pen is slightly flattened, allowing one to create lines of slightly varying thickness.

If you take a look at these pictures above and to the left, you’ll see what I mean. (If the pictures of the nibs aren’t clear enough to see the difference, you’ll definitely notice one in the writing sample I did below.) With the regular nib fountain pen, the lines are all the same width regardless of whether you’re writing horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. With the slightly flat nib of the  italic nib pen, letters start to look a bit fancier. See how the nib is just a little bit flat instead of coming to point? If you can’t tell, check out the nib on the calligraphy fountain pen. It’s the same idea as the italic nib because it’s flat too instead of coming to a point; it’s just much more pronounced. The variety of line width you can get with that thing is insane, and it’s not even a very big nib for a calligraphy pen. (This one is 2.4mm). I love to see how beautifully the letters turn out thanks to that small change.

I still use ball point pens a lot out of convenience, but I really do love the fountain pens I have. Combined with my fiance’s (he has quite a few, as shown in the first picture), we now have quite a collection. He’s even bought a couple of calligraphy fountain pens, and I’m considering following suit because fancy writing is just fun. I get way too excited about writing things like thank you notes with the italic nib pen.

As you can probably guess from my ongoing series of posts on Scrivener, I have an absolute blast trying writing tools out and figuring out which ones work for me and which are just novelties. Another writing tool I’m hoping to try soon is the typewriter, but as I don’t currently have the space for one, I’m holding off on looking into them. So fountain pens it is! Have you tried fountain pens? Have a writing utensil that you swear by? Leave a comment below!