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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

The main thing I learned watching these videos is that Cornell students—or Americans more generally, perhaps—hold pens in a way that seems unusual to me. For example, with the thumb wrapped round the pen or with it gripped by the tips of all five fingers.

Is that normal in the US? In the UK, I was taught to grip the pen with my thumb and forefinger tips and rest it on my middle finger. Most people I see writing hold the pen that way too.

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That's very weird. I'm an American and I hold my pen the way you do, which is the way I was taught. I had never noticed it before but now that I see it, the way the students are holding it in the video is very strange to me.

Edit: apparently I do the "quadrupod" grip, while you do the "tripod" grip. But neither of those is what some of the students in the video were doing.

I am a student here in the US.

I was certainly taught to hold and write with pens/pencils in the way that you describe. That being said, I have noticed that I and many of my peers somehow moved over to holding it with the thumb wrapped around the pen, and the pen held more straight up and down.

I am not quite sure what causes this, but I think that is is related to the way that you must hold many cheap ballpoint pens for them to write consistently. I personally fixed this bad habit when I switched over to fountain pens.

There was a big change over the 1950s in how people held their pens, as we shifted from fountain pens to ballpoints. You can see in pre-1950 movies how people held their pens (and pencils) less vertically.

A fountain pen will encourage you to adopt the old style of grip, with the result of less physical stress on the hand and more legible writing.

There are many ways to hold pens[0]. The “dynamic tripod” grip is the one they taught in elementary school, but it wasn’t until I bought a Lamy Safari fountain pen a couple years ago that I could hold a pen that way. I use the “lateral tripod” grip, not because I was taught it or even wanted to, but that’s how I naturally pick up a pen to write. It drove my dad nuts and I tried really hard to do it the “right” way, but the instant I stopped thinking about it I’d go back to my way.

It turns out that both of those are considered good grips. The dynamic tripod is preferred, but both are just fine from a physiology, balance, and control point of view.

[0] https://www.ot-mom-learning-activities.com/correct-pencil-gr...

At least in the NYC public schools in the 80's, we were taught to hold a pen/pencil as you describe.

I remember having one friend who held the writing instrument between his index and middle fingers, the thumb at the tip. Really odd in the way he held it, and every teacher we had for 4 years, at the least, tried to correct him.

I tried holding a pen as in the video, and even just miming, it felt really unnatural.

I don't know if there is a technical name for it, but I call the grip you describe as the "fist" grip. I see it used almost exclusively by females and I have speculated that it is motivated by the force required to make legible marks with cheap ballpoint pens. I noted that the boys in those videos were all using the standard "tripod" grip.

I'm unsure about these descriptions but in Canada/Qc this is the way I was taught to hold a pencil: https://www.fergusonvalues.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Ha...

Which is the correct way.

I have had terrible handwriting all my life. Could it be because I have been holding it wrong all this time?

I hold by the tip of my index finger, middle finger, and thumb.

Handwriting is holding the pen, posture, technique, and practice. So yes, that's a factor.

Also UK here, I don't remember being taught how to hold a pen. Mine rests on the third knuckle of the ring finger, with the middle fingertip bracing the pen tip and the index fingertip bracing about a third of the way up. Then the upper part of the pen rests in the crook of the thumb and palm. The thumb-tip rests across part of the index finger and middle finger, providing some stability.

The secret is that American school doesn’t really bother itself with that much teaching. Nobody teaches children how to hold pens properly, cursive writing, etc.

Yeah sad but true. I think cursive is still taught for a year or two in elementary school but after that it's not required and most kids just print or develop their own personal blend of printing/cursive handwriting.

I still take notes by hand, on paper, using cursive. I prefer a quality wood pencil and a separate rubber-type eraser for note-taking. For writing text, typing is faster but for note-taking during lectures or presentations I find handwriting more effective, as I can quickly add drawings and arrows and other notation as needed.

I was taught Palmer script in grade school--always one of my worst classes. Basically can't do it any longer.

> I think cursive is still taught for a year or two in elementary school but after that it's not required and most kids just print or develop their own personal blend of printing/cursive handwriting.

This is the natural result of teaching kids unnaturally and gratuitously ornate cursive forms for the sake of it, divorced from the utility that cursive writing is supposed to have. Handwriting forms serve two roles: to be written, and to be read. The point of cursive, outside of the immediate class, is that it optimizes for write time. If you teach people a cursive form that isn't faster to write than bespoke chicken-scratch, well, then it's no surprise they're not going to use it.

My teacher at that age did a spectacular job and was very attentive to my needs. I was ambidextrous and she made me pick a hand. I picked left. I'm left handed to this day.

They don't teach engineering undergrad students how to use sliderules anymore either.[1]

Technology changes. Literally noone other than maybe caligraphers, typeset designers and engravers needs to know how to use cursive writing anymore. It's gone from being essential for everyone to being an extreme niche.

[1] My dad always had a sliderule until I was like 8 or 9 and his sliderule was replaced by an HP RPN calculator. He learned to use it as an undergrad chemical engineer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule

That isn't normal, most people hold a pen as you describe.

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