Why Fountain Pens?

I just think they’re neat.

I feel like they are honestly easier to write nice with. With a ballpoint pen, I tend to scribble where as with a fountain pen my writing seems more legible. I also find them more comfortable for longer writing because I don’t have to press the pen on the paper. It’s more like its gliding across it.

I also like that they are refillable with pretty much any ink I want and that their refills come in glass bottles as opposed to metal or plastic cartridges that are just thrown away when empty. Of course there are plastic ink cartridges for fountain pens, I just don’t use them.

I find them to be far more customizable, less throw away, and more expressive for what I’m trying to write. It combines to make your writing feel more like you. I also just like them because they’re built with longevity in mind without much concern for cost in most cases, with the exceptions being customizable to bring back to life if desired.

Personally I like the way they fell, write and the fact that they are less wasteful.

Because they’re fun.

There’s thousands of pens to pick. They can be as cheap or as expensive, as colorful or as understated, as stock or as custom, as gaudy or as classy as you like. There’s an infinite amount of ink shades you can try out. There are inks with sparkles. There are inks with metallic shades. There are basic round nibs and calligraphy nibs. There are gold nibs. They’re easy to fix and customize. Treat them well, and they can last a lifetime.

My daughter loves her transparent green sparkly pen with hot pink ink.

“I don’t recall any point in time where I had any interest in fountain pens.”

Proceeds to write blog post about their interest in fountain pens that started last fall.

For me, it forces me to slow down my writing and make the letters right. My scribbling with a fountain pen looks so much worse than scribbling with a ballpoint or pencil, and I already have difficulty reading what I write with ballpoint or pencil. Now that I’ve used fountain pens for a bit, I write slow enough with other writing implements to be readable.

But also WHO fountain pens? 🤔

As it turns out there are quite a few people that were or are known to use fountain pens:

• Mark Twain

IIRC, Mark Twain also lost a considerable amount of money investing in an early typewriter company.

searches

Apparently he was also a very early user of typewriters.

https://historyfacts.com/arts-culture/fact/mark-twain-first-typewriter-book/

I was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone in his house,” Mark Twain once claimed, adding that he was also “the first person in the world to apply the typemachine to literature.” The author born Samuel Clemens was indeed the first to publish a book written on a typewriter, though he may have misremembered which one it was — Twain recalled it being The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but it was more likely 1883’s Life on the Mississippi, according to typewriter historian Darryl Rehr. Twain didn’t type the book on a typewriter himself, however — he handwrote it and the manuscript was later typed.

The typewriter in question was a Remington 2, which the company later told the public about as part of a marketing campaign. In an advertisement published in Harper’s, Remington published a letter that Twain wrote, in which he made this observation about the emerging technology: “At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about: the person who doesn’t own one is a curiosity.”

Writing in cursive is better for your brain. Cursive was designed around nib-based pens, like dip and fountain pens, and it’s easier to write in cursive wiþ a fountain pen þan any oþer kind of pen.

Additionally, it can be cheaper to own a fountain pen, as your only consumable is ink. It’s also better for þe environment þan ball pens, because þere’s almost no disposable waste, aside from a tiny amount of wasted ink if you clean your pen.

Fountain pens are more versatile - þe diversity of inks you can get, in a rainbow of colors, wiþ sheen or shimmer… and you can use þem all while owning only a single pen.

I needed a pen that I can write quickly woth in class without causing fatigue and fountain pens work so well for that.

Writing with one is way better tactilely than a normal pen. It’s more meditative.

Because other people sleepwalk through their lives on easy mode, totally unskilled in anything. Creating nothing, inventing nothing, contributing nothing, learning nothing, understanding nothing. They expect to be catered to, waited on hand and foot by some corporate machine, and as soon as they experience any adversity they tap out.

That’s why I write with a fountain pen. That’s why I carry a balisong knife. That’s why I drive stick shift. That’s why I ride motorcycles. Because these things are harder than the alternative and require some modicum of dedication, and occasionally require you to think.

Plus they’re neat, and anachronistic. Or possibly neat because they’re anachronistic.