How to grip a pen?

Oddly enough, when i'm going for long writing periods, the Taylor Swift method is how i do it. I've been writing that way since high school when we had to write out 5-10-page essays instead of typing them. I get slightly less control, but can chicken scratch for hours without any fatigue.

I laughed when I saw this was the top comment on this post! My first thought reading this article was, dang, wait til he learns how Taylor Swift holds a pen. It looks weird at first but it's surprisingly comfortable and easy to write with!

I eneded up doing something like this when I was trying to find a new way to hold the pen because it's was in such pain that I have had to change.

> And don't get me started on fountain pens - they are explicitly designed to be 'dragged' across the page. As a left hander you mostly 'push'

A left-handed childhood friend of mine would place her folders at a ~45 degree angle, and write at an angle. That way, she was not pushing the pen from the left (smudge the paper with her hand), but rather pulling from top-left to bottom-right.

That said I also abandoned fountain pens - writing with them looks nicer, but writing math quickly is a pain.

I'm also left-handed and dyspraxic. At school they gave me a triangular rubber grip [0] to put on my pen to help me hold it properly. Though I didn't get much better despite spending hours doing handwriting practice.

At high school after I finally got diagnosed they lent me a little Amstrad laptop to do my work on [1]

I can write neatly if I "draw" the words, but it takes ages. My handwriting hasn't been an issue since I left school, so I don't worry about it too much.

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Triangular-Pencil-Grip-5-Pack/dp/B0... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_NC100

I used to get a really painful "cave" in the side of my middle finger, from the pressure that I applied to the pen, after writing a page or so. These days I'm barely handwriting, so I'm good.

Also left-handed - and I also hate fountain pens, but for another reason: as a left hander you move your hand over the fresh line you are writing, so the text ends up smudged with a fountain pen. Ball-point pens work better (mostly), and I refuse to contort my hand or write at strange angles to avoid this, that's a recipe for trouble. Fortunately I don't have to write a lot by hand anymore...

So people used to think there was only one standard-issue type of brain, and that everyone's brain operated in the same way and could learn the same things equally well, and a single optimal technique could be developed and taught once to everyone. The Taylorist dream, among others. But left handed people kept stubbornly existing, despite the beatings. And then education discovered that dyslexia and dyspraxia are things. And the not-well-understood category of "non-neurotypical" people currently classified into conditions like autism, Aspergers, ADHD etc. Eventually we're going to learn to fit the technique to the human rather than the other way round. People over processes, and all that.

This may explain why people have strong-but-wildly-different opinions about which programming languages are "intuitive". Maybe some are just ""left-handed"", in a very non-literal sense.

(I'm a left hander from just slightly after the "beating children for being left-handed" era, but I expect there's someone in the audience who remembers it)

Handwriting education is sorely lacking for left-handed people. Most often they are left to figure out things for themselves.

Things you -- or other left-handed people -- could try:

- Rotate your writing surface. The more you rotate your writing surface the more it changes the writing direction from left-to-right to top-to-bottom which solves a lot common issues. It may take some getting used to but it's a lot better than using a claw grip to bend your wrist out of the way of your writing.

- There are "left-handed-inks" for fountain pens available these days. They generally dry quickly and resist smudging. Combine this with a pen that has a round tip: it won't give a hoot about which direction you're applying force in since it won't dig into the paper like a square or chisel tip will.

- Use a calligraphers grip. Place the pen in your hand, the body of the pen resting in the web between your index finger and thumb. Rest the grip of the pen on your middle finger in a comfortable spot, some people rest it on the side of the fingertip but moving it up till past the knuckle places it in an area with more padding. This does necessitate rotating your paper to avoid smudging but it does make applying less force to your pen a lot easier. If you still have pressure problems with this grip you can try modifying it by resting the pen on your index finger instead and holding it with your thumb.

- I'd consider this somewhat of a last resort since it's not quite the best writing technique but you can try holding the pen some ways above the grip. The extra distance from your writing can be just enough to avoid smudging.

The world sure isn't built for left handed people, but it seems to me that a lot of suffering could be avoided by including specifics for lefties in writing education.

I feel your pain. I am also left-handed and during school times switched pen nibs every other month since they kept deteriorating. And I never quite got the hang of avoiding smearing.

I switched to writing almost exclusively on tablets a few years ago and it's so much better for me. I can't quite put into words how much of a difference it makes for me. Smearing is a non-issue and the pen glides fine either way on a glass surface.

There are some other benefits as well: I can no longer loose my notes and I'm a lot better about filing them away neatly digitally than I am with physical notes, but I suppose that might be a very personal thing. Having them indexed occasionally comes in handy as well.

I went from a Surface to an iPad Pro and vastly prefer the latter. If you haven't yet I would recommend giving it a try. These days even the normal $329 iPad supports the Apple Pencil and provides incredible value in my opinion.

I second the suggestion from /u/Doxin to rotate the writing surface; see the illustration here: http://www.handedness.org/action/leftwrite.html

My dad is left-handed and learned with fountain pens. He writes with his wrist bent inwards very sharply so that he can drag the pen without smearing the ink.

To get an idea of what it looks like: bend your wrist to about 90 degrees, hold it so the "point" of your wrist is pointing towards the top of the paper, hold the pen so that it is tilted to the left of the paper going down and the right of the paper going up. Your pinky should be the only thing in contact with the page, and should be far enough towards the top of the page that it doesn't drag through the tallest letters you draw.

It's the most awkward looking way of holding a pencil I've seen.

I'm a lefty and I write with the sheet rotated a full 90 degrees CW, so I write towards myself. This keeps my hand 'below' the written line.

Same in Russia, to a lesser defgree. For pens\penls\forks\knives.

My grip was always 'right' but I clearly remember my father commenting every time he saw a person holding his tool the wrong way. To him me doing it the right way was like a little victory or something.

On a related note, there are pens whose grip is shaped to teach/enforce the "correct" way. For example the Pilot penmanship or many Lamy fountain pens are popular ones.

That said, teaching handwriting is surprisingly very country specific. For example, in Germany proper grip and writing with a fountain pen was something you were taught in elementary school (I think now less emphasized) and simple cursive. In the US they seem to instead prefer throwaway pens and seemingly hard to read cursive.

Interesting. I am curious. What's the pen grip taught in Japan?

I’ve studied ペン字 a bit (the art of writing Japanese with a pen instead of a brush as was traditionally done). Grip is emphasized as bad grip makes it very difficult to write beautifully: certain strokes become crooked and/or shaky. Posture is also emphasized.

I don’t think it has as much to do with chopsticks as children are generally proficient with chopsticks before they can write in my experience.

As dwg says, there is an optimisation of the grip for what is seen as good writing.

The interesting part is that stroke count and order is important, sometimes more important than the exact resulting shapes. That puts an emphasis on how the letters are written, and changes the tradeoffs between precision and fluidity.

In primary school in the US, we had a chart very similar to the one linked from TFA showing how to hold a pen.

More importantly, Escher's drawing also shows us a DIY pencil handle that turns free IKEA freebies into a full-length writing instruments.

My impression from the US was that everyone writes with a quadrupod grip. Which looks very inefficient.

I was born in Russia, we were taught to hold a pen a certain way. We had exercises too (one I remember: grip the pen (with 3 fingers) and dab it forward-and-back by bending the three fingers and unbending them). I was shocked at the way people help pens in the US when I arrived.

The grip we were taught I believe gives you more control over the pen, with no straining -- just an elegant extension of fingertips.

Ball-point pens actually were very painful for me to use after breaking my dominant hand thumb. Fountain pens forced me to both grip and stoke much more gently, and even fifteen years later I still use fountain pens almost exclusively.

I've found myself gravitating back to ballpoints specifically because I find the pressure gives me more feedback and helps me write more neatly.

I've held a pen like this all my life. Long term effects are a callous on the middle finger front-most knuckle and a slightly crooked index finger. Gets the job done, but I wonder if there is a better way.

Did the same thing. It took a bit to get used to but I really prefer it now. My hand writing improved a little bit.

Same here. Teachers tried to push me to the "correct" grip, but it just did not work for me. They said I would get severe hand pain if I grow older. Never happened, always felt comfortable with this grip.

I use the same grip. I just tried several different grips using fewer fingers and I feel that they all impede pen movement because the fingers not on the pen are in the way. It just feels less versatile or something.

> implicit belief that people’s handwriting was better in the past than it is now

I, on the other hand, believe this. When typing doesn't exist, and your livelihood depends on your records being legible, you put a lot more effort into legibility (and having heard a few stories about the corporal punishment associated with poor handwriting in schools a century ago, you'd get better out of pure self-preservation).

To back that up with an anecdote, I found a box of private bank ledgers maintained by my maternal grandfather, and I was absolutely astounded at how neatly he wrote. These were for only his own consumption, but the handwriting was clearly legible to me a five decades later.

Even my mother's handwriting is quite legible, even though computers became popular in her 40's (and typewriters in her teens).

My 6 year old does the grip first described in the post. Her school teacher has shown much apathy in correcting it and even suggested it was "too late" (UK state school). I'm going to try and help her myself. Tips include shorter pencils and "pinch and flip": http://mamaot.com/3-tricks-to-help-kids-learn-to-hold-their-...

Have you tried teaching her lock-picking ? Its a fun activity to develop fine dexterity. Having the right grip helps with the motor control.

Wow. You may want to take the opportunity to look at every aspect of your life and look for where you should be questioning how things are done. NM

I really wonder who came up with the idea that one and the same grip must be the "correct" one for everybody.

My handwriting looks like I had a cerebral hemorrhage and then Parkinson's. I don't know how I made it through primary school when penmanship was still graded, although the grading was in its waning years.

Um.. I've always used this grip with either hand, didn't realize that it was so "out there"