The Antique Penman

Path of Least Resistance: The Bane of the Ballpoint

Friday, September 18th, 2015

“No Fuss, No Muss” (1901 ad).

Humanity seems hellbent on following the path of least resistance. Quick and easy is what we’re after: fast food, convenience stores. Our technological trajectory aims for comfort, cleanliness, speed.

This is nothing new—the words “no muss, no fuss” (or vice versa) go back at least to an ad in the May 1901 issue of The Conservative, published in historic Nebraska City, Nebraska. We’re a species in a hurry, most obsessed with “saving time.”

Time cannot, of course, be saved. But in an age when you can buy shoes without leaving your armchair and have them delivered to your feet within the hour, why bother with the hassle of writing, say, a birthday card by hand? Why not just send email? Or, better yet, tap out a quick text message with your oh-so-nimble thumbs? “HB 2 U!”

Sheaffer cartridge pen from the 1960s (courtesy www.sheaffertarga.com).

So a sense of irony struck me the other day when I happened upon this excellent article in The Atlantic about the bane that is the ballpoint pen.

I remember back in grade school—i.e., sometime in the ’60s, when we still learned cursive writing—having a Sheaffer cartridge pen, a sort of fountain pen with a built-in, changeable ink supply. (No more messy refills!) But cheap, disposable ballpoint pens soon replaced that Sheaffer. My entire experience writing with a nib couldn’t have lasted but a couple of years.

What I didn’t recall until Josh Giesbrecht pointed it out in his piece in The Atlantic is how much easier it was to wield that old Sheaffer pen. Thin ink flows fast from a pen with a nib (speed, ease, efficiency), requiring barely a flick of the wrist to apply. A ballpoint forces you to press down hard to keep its thick ink flowing. A ballpoint takes a load of effort. There’s a lot less hand-cramp with a fountain pen.

This led Giesbrecht—who, like me, took to hand-printing after high school—to a conclusion on why he abandoned cursive writing:

“Fountain pens want to connect letters. Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write, need to be pushed into the paper rather than merely touch it.”

Page from the 1835 journal of Mirabeau B. Lamar, which inspired Lamar Pen.

Somehow, we’ve diverged onto a path of more resistance.

I want to imagine a time when old-style fountain pens become popular again, and that handwriting won’t seem such a chore. When people will choose again to take the time, to reap the benefits to brain and dexterity, to pause mid-sentence to gaze out the window, to spend a moment in thought, to ruminate. Maybe even pay a little attention to spelling and grammar.

It won’t make up for the entirety of the loss of cursive writers—you can’t stop progress, however, ill-considered—but it might preserve a beneficial talent we humans have.

In my closet is a box of family keepsakes dating back nearly a century. It’s full to the brim with letters, cards, and notes—all kept because of what had once been recorded there by hand. Such a treasure only exists because someone had funneled a sort of magic from their brain, and through their moving fingers, and onto a scrap of paper seen by the eyes of another, to be processed by another’s brain.

What’s on that scrap of paper is different from the contents of an email message. What will our keepsake boxes be filled with a century from now?

Postcard from my grandparents to my great-grandparents, 10/22/1943.

Miscellanea

» The Australian Broadcasting Corporation considers whether the end of handwriting is near…

» …and offers up a quiz proving how diverse and distinctive it is.

» But back-to-school days here in the U.S. reveal hope for a reversal of this trend.

» Meanwhile, ChicagoNow blogger Brett Baker gets it: handwriting is personal.

» And check it out—handwritten keepsakes seem to be a thing.

» The Saugus, Massachusetts, school district is contemplating handwritten homework assignments.

» And how lovely to think of handwriting as “an irreplaceable tactile pleasure”.

Tags: art of handwriting, ballpoint, Cedar Street font, cursive, fountain pen, handwriting, handwriting in schools, handwritten letters, Lamar Pen, least resistance, nib pen, old letters, penmanship, post cards, Sheaffer cartridge pen
Posted in Cursive, Education, History, News, Penmanship, Ruminations, Science | No Comments »

Prospecting the Margins

Thursday, August 14th, 2014

1851 letter by Emily Austin Perry, who never wasted a margin (Emily Austin).

A letter written in 1851 by Emily Austin Perry, who never wasted a margin. (Our Emily Austin font is modeled after her hand).

I ride a lot of miles on my bicycle. Fact is, I’m kind of a bike-riding fool, pedaling up and down the wide shoulders of Route 1 here on the scenic coast of Maine. One recent year, I cycled more than 2,100 miles—and only hit the pavement once or twice. While on my bike the other day, I got to thinking about things I find on the side of the road, and for some reason I thought of the many old handwritten pages I read, and the kind of stuff I encounter in the margins.

Along my particular stretch of Route 1, the most common jetsam I come across (aside from run-of-the-mill litter) are single work gloves. Also surprisingly abundant are banana peels. I understand the lost work gloves—some landscaper or trap-hauler had left a pair on the bed-rail of some pickup—but banana peels?

It’s easier to explain the peripheral jots and tittles in the margins of old letters and journals.

Ink blots, for one thing. Back in the days of quills and fountain pens, when writing was a silent pursuit and ink was a sort of fuel, spillage was routine. Drips, smudges, purposeful dabbings. They’re common enough that I’ve made sure all our old handwriting fonts have ink-blot characters. (It’s fair to call me obsessed with authenticity.)

Cross-outs and insertions in the journal of Mirabeau B. Lamar (inspiration for Lamar Pen).

Random scribbles crop up regularly, too, where authors were testing their pens. (Heck, I do that still, when stuck with a recalcitrant ballpoint.) Occasionally I even come upon what look like true doodles, the work of a preoccupied mind.

And within the handwritten text itself are small signs of our propensity to edit: cross-outs and underscores, insertions of words and small phrases, notes in the margins. Word-insertions of two hundred years ago look identical to word-insertions of today—an angle pointer below the baseline at a space, the word writ small above the ascenders. Literally, you’re reading between the lines. We’ve included cross-out characters in many of our antique pen fonts, and several have insertion glyphs, as well.

Smear, ink blots, and seal-cutout on a page of a letter to John Adams by his dearest friend (source materials for Abigail Adams).

Smear, ink blots, and sealing-wax cutout from a letter by Abigail Adams (used to make Abigail Adams font).

But perhaps most telling of the times—and something we can hardly imagine these days—is that the margins of old pages are often chock-full of real content. Back when paper was dear and delivery iffy, letter-writers made efficient use of the real estate. Emily Austin Perry, who wrote many letters home to Texas while traveling with her daughter up East, commonly crammed whole paragraphs around the edges, upside-down and sideways.

And if you go back a couple of centuries or more, before envelopes, you’re liable also to find evidence of sealing wax in the margins—perhaps some reddish discoloration, a tear or cutout, even a bit of wax itself.Back then correspondents would simply fold and seal the pages of their letters together.

Inserted "h" from the Colonial American broadside I used in making Remsen Script.

Inserted “h,” in a detail from a Colonial American broadside. (Source material for Remsen Script.)

The leavings in the margins, I find, raise questions that launch trains-of-thought that give life to flickers of insight. Who lost that glove? Who threw that banana peel out the window? Does that smudge mean this letter-writer was left-handed? That faint, circular mark—could it have come from a tear?

Addendum
A little while ago, before publishing this entry, I took my daily bicycle ride and—I kid you not—came upon both a work glove and a banana peel along the shoulder of Route 1. As proof, I took these photos with my phone.

Snap-on®

Banana peel

Tags: Abigail Adams, cross-outs, Emily Austin, ink blots, insertions, Lamar Pen, margins, old handwriting, Remsen Script, sealing wax
Posted in Old Letters, Penmanship, Ruminations, Specimens | No Comments »