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Comment by csw-001 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve worked with a fountain pen daily for decades. It’s funny how they become linked in your mind to event. This is the one I signed my marriage license with. This is the one I wrote the bar exam with.

Now I’m teaching my children to write. I got them a fountain pen, and they love using it. It’s exacting, so they have to form letters properly, and if they don’t mind their non-writing hand they will end up smudged and inky. I was reluctant at first to hand a kid an ink-filled fountain pen - but it’s turned out great, and they are so much better with it than pencils and ball points.

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My first three years of school were in a little French farm village [0] — even in kindergarten, we wrote in longhand with (literally) pen and ink: We used wooden dowels, about the size of a pencil, with a steel nib at one end, which we dipped into an inkwell in the desk. The teacher would periodically refill the inkwells from a big bottle of ink.

[0] My dad was in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at a nearby NATO air base; we lived "on the economy" about 30 miles outside the base. My parents always regarded that tour as the best years of their lives. I've been told that when speaking French I still sound like a local (as in, a faint Berrichon accent).

Wow! That’s amazing. I bet you’ve got good handwriting and penmanship habits.

> I bet you’ve got good handwriting and penmanship habits.

Sadly, no: My dad's next duty station was in a small college town in east Texas, where my mother said the local elementary school completely messed up my handwriting because I didn't write "proper." I do wish my current handwriting had the French look.

> daily for decades

Did you yourself learn to use one as a kid?

Nope. “Decades” here is roughly 25 years. I picked one up in middle school because I was going through a “retro” phase. I no long where vintage shop fedoras (I still maintain they are cool though), but I never went back once I started writing with a fountain pen. I started with this neat looking waterman they sold in the gifts section of Office Depot. I still write mostly waterman Florida Blue Ink… I was in that 50/50 era of laptop use v. hand writing in high school and even in college people mostly seemed to start on paper before typing final copies up in Word. That might be a contributing factor. I can’t think and organize without a pen in hand . Closest I’ve come is the Remarkable tablet - but I still find myself using a real fountain pen daily.

ah ok. Here in Germany it was (and I think still is) common to learn/be required to write with one in elementary school, so having on at kid age is normal, including the occasional mess...

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