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Comment by hatmatrix | Hacker News Reader

In Japan I believe the (true and only correct) way to hold a pen is taught and emphasized from a young age, while the United States maintains a "do it your way" mentality about it. It may have to do with chopsticks requiring similar precision or that it is difficult to follow the detailed prescriptions for writing Chinese characters otherwise - I'm just speculating here.

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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.

What's different about German cursive? I live in a German-speaking country now and I haven't really noticed any defining differences where I am, though I also wasn't looking for them.

Throwaway ballpoint pens seem to be the norm at least in university settings here, in my experience.

Working in an international school, I find that my German students routinely have the best formed handwriting of all. Many use Lamy pens. Chinese writing (in English) is easy to read, since they don't usually do joined up writing, and craft each letter.

The American one is much more extravagant/different from printed letters:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/48963623/american-cursive-ha...

In this sense it is more similar to the older German Sütterlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin or Spencerian script.

Looks pretty, but very, very hard to read if you are not used to it. The German one switched to a much more simple "Ausgangsschrift" after 1941 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausgangsschrift#Ausgangsschrif...

My impression in the US was that there you are taught cursive in school, hate it and then never use it again.

I learned how to write in Kurrent a year ago or so. I'm not quite up to speed with it, but it looks nice, and I think it has the potential to be faster than British/American cursive styles.

The other problem with the American approach is that you are never taught the proper motion patterns ("Arkaden und Girlanden", anyone?) that cursive handwriting consists of. You are expected to write properly but aren't given the tooling.

That's funny I kind of developed to writing in Ausgangsschrift naturally having been taught the more florid US style of US cursive. It's basically just connecting the normal print version of the characters so you don't have to lift the pen. Mine's more of a mutt though since it basically came out of just writing in print without lifting my pen as school demanded faster note taking.

In the US in the 90s, we were taught that Ausgangsschtift one. I don't even recognize the "American" one as a thing anyone uses here.

In the 90s most schools still taught cursive, but the US is big, so your school might have been an exception.

> In a 2007 survey of 200 teachers of first through third grades in all 50 American states, 90 percent of respondents said their schools required the teaching of cursive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive#Decline_of_English_cur...

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.

What's the preferred grip taught in Russia?

I don't remember being taught how to grip a pen correctly. I'm pretty sure my grip is wrong too, since I developed a callus on my index finger from writing too much during school. FWIW I grip like "dynamic tripod grip" on "figure 3", except the thumb is perpendicular to the pen.

Something like this: https://ds04.infourok.ru/uploads/ex/07fb/00195c5a-00265f89/6...

But general idea is that you have to do simple exercises with a kid before school so that a kid won't be just clenching a pen like they usually do with a spoon when they a small.

We even have a short poem for breaks during such exercises. :D

Something like this:

We were writting, we were writting,

Our fingers got all tired.

Gonna get a little rest

Then we'll pick from where we left.

In India Punjab, I learned to jold the pencil between thumb, index & middle finger. Imagine these three finger ends touching each other with ends at same plane, & touching from opposite of nails side.

Now imagine a pencil between these three, with thumb & index fingers' opposite of nail side touching the pencil; & pencil resting on left of middle finger nail side.

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.

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

Relaxed forefinger, not bent inward like the authors original grip. The reason is that vertical downward strokes are made by bending the index forefinger downward.

Here is more detail (in Japanese):

https://youtu.be/0RlXSbI0YAc

(I don't speak Japanese but) That seems the same as I was taught for writing English in the UK. I'm sure a child using 'Correct #3' of OP would have been corrected.

(Computers existed throughout my schooling; I'm pretty sure handwriting's still taught. Mine is of course unpracticed and poor.)

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