Continuing the discussion from Sheening fountain pen inks:
Pictures of handwriting grips.
A joke one
Slightly more serious
How ever you hold your writing utensil, here’s a video on stopping the shame placed on handwriting and some of the historical reasons it got that way.
How do you hold your writing instrument?
I think I use the standard grip as per this video:
Mr Goulet lost me after the first few seconds with his continual ‘you know’ and ‘like’.
Having said that - I love fountain pens and use them a lot, especially for formal/business correspondence. I hold my pens as in the image on the front of the video Azz has just put up - and that goes for both hands as I am ambidextrous.
I spent two years learning Calligraphy at Art School in the evenings and loved every minute of it - still use illuminated capitals occasionally when making special cards.
Think I mentioned that I got some calligraphy nibs which were angled for left handed people such as myself. Do you need different nibs depending on which hand you use?
I hold my pen the same way as you and Azz.
As an aside…an old friend of mine holds his spoon in the “kindergarten” style, and tends to use a spoon to eat most of his food, including chips. He’s a head teacher of a school down south somewhere.
For straight forward handwriting - no. If you are into italics or fancy calligraphy then - yes. The nibs are angled differently for each hand.
If it helps, he’s working on reducing the ‘like’ and ‘you know’. He mentions that he’s trying, but he doesn’t want to bring it up when it happens because that just brings more attention to it.
He does a 2 hour pencast every week that’s largely spontaneous. His main job is the CEO of his retail fountain pen company, so they don’t have the luxury to spend all day redoing the content.
His wife Rachel, who also runs the company, has a four finger grip that disallows certain fountain pens like the Lamy Safari and others that have a tri faceted grip.
I hold a pen properly. (Standard way)
I wouldn’t be able to control the pen, or write if l held it in any other way… the other ‘holds’ in the diagram look a bit ‘awkward’ but l am sure the end product is just as neat as standard.
Somewhat related.
Do you write with your fingers, wrist or arm?
Fingers have more control but tire out more quickly that the wrist or arm.
