Answers to questions

Here’s some that are included in Microsoft Word that I think look quite good:

I use the Bradley Hand font in @Gareth 's posting above. But when printed out it looks a bit faint, and if you write in Bold it looks angry! Might try the Segoe Script font next time, but much prefer Bradley - it looks friendly.

I like the Lucinda.

Me too! :slight_smile:

Yes, but can other people read it?

I’m the same, but I notice that if I don’t keep it up, my writing degenerates.

To respond to the original question about diaries, I would be reluctant to maintain a diary in a single document, because (for me) it would be too easy to delete the whole lot. I’d prefer to use a system of folders or a dedicated diary app (available for Windows, Mac etc).

1 Like

So do I - about a year ago the urge came upon me to buy a fountain pen, and now I have several (and too many different colours of ink!)

Using a “proper” pen slows me down a bit compared to using a biro, and makes my writing more legible (usually).

It’s just a nicer experience, and can be a conversation starter as so few people use fountain pens.

3 Likes

I love Diamine inks and the names they use. I have bottles of Eclipse (a really deep blue-black) and Writer’s Blood.

Ditto! I like their Ancient Copper and Mediterranean Blue, but my most used colour is Diamine Twilight (also a blue-black).

Jacques Herbin are nice too. But there are so many amazing ink manufacturers - Ferris Wheel Press spring to mind, then there are the Japanese ones like Sailor and Pilot.

I get my pen and ink “fix” from the aptly named Cult Pens in Devon. :slight_smile: https://cultpens.com/

1 Like

So do I, but at first I thought Bradley Hand but a bit faint, but now I’ve had another look and I see BH, unlike Lucinda, is not joined up and looks too much like a, more legible, version of my own writing as I nowadays try to avoid writing too quickly and completely messing it up.

1 Like

I can read it!

1 Like

I can’t justify it for now as we’ve got other priorities but I’ve been eyeing up an e-ink device for taking notes at work instead of having countless notes from countless meetings in countless notebooks. The one I’d like to get most is the SuperNote A5, which is supposed to feel as close to writing on paper as you can get.

I’d then learn how to use a tool such as Obsidian to store things in a more organised way using the Zettelkasten system, cause at the moment I have to try and remember who said what in which meeting on which day, in order to go back through those countless notebooks.

I have an iPad for work and I use it, with a stylus, to take contemporaneous notes during meetings, simply because it can decode my handwriting better than I can, especially when it’s a month later.

Does the glass screen make writing difficult?

That’s an unusual way of forming a P.

No, I have a screen protector which has a matt finish so it feels quite like a paper surface.

Interesting, thanks. I think the missus had an iPad some time ago… maybe I’ll steal it and use it. Thanks, @JohnH

I should probably have been more specific that it’s an iPad Pro and I don’t know enough about fruity devices to confirm that it’s possible on the standard models.

I’m tempted to make a joke about shaking hands with the unemployed. But honestly, there was relatively little input about letter formation when I started learning to write, and then when I went to college it was necessary to take notes rapidly and I think my writing changed as I had to find the fastest way to form the words.

It may be amusing to know that I wrote ‘colleagues’, then went and spell-checked electronically because after learning the French form, it just looked plain wrong.

I’ve used ‘nice’ ie. well-designed, but inexpensive fountain pens all my adult life, these pens were never expensively nostalgic like Mont Blanc, but embodied the optimism of late modernist democratic design Pens like the Parker 61 (the best?)

Also the Parker 25

the half-sized Kaweco Sport - compact and cute - from the inter-War golden age of Czech design:-

the Lamy Safari:-

image

I last used the last one just before Christmas when enrolling on a free(!!!) French language course intended to help immigrants into employment, I’m retired and certainly not looking for work, but they’re short of students and want to keep the course going. However, completing the 8 page enrolment form was the most handwriting I’d done for years and it was very evident that my only bit of arthritis which is in my writing thumb now made legibly writing by hand very difficult. I’ve now got permission to do everything on my laptop (think I’m officially ‘disabled’).

Sad…

2 Likes