The only conclusion that seems even remotely supported by the evidence here is that writing by hand is important for learning letters. As in, learning your ABC's. No arguments there.
The new study cited is a Norwegian small-sample-size study of college kids typing vs. writing Pictionary words while wearing an EEG. Not learning, I would point out.
What they observe is more connectivity between brain regions when they write, because well, writing and uses more of your brain. And then they make this immense leap to, "and it seems like the connectivity we see when people learn, ergo it's good for learning."
Then Scientific American amplifies it because it's a divisive non-falsifiable thing that people (like me, admittedly) get weirdly invested in. This is bad science and bad science comms. Show me how you decided that this connectivity pattern was evidence of learning when observed in a non-learning context—that's the crux of the issue.
I suspect you can't "see" learning of the type that college kids do in an hour-long EEG session. It unfolds over days, months, years.
I learned to read the Armenian alphabet a few years ago, and writing actually didn't help at all with that, reading did. What I did was try my best to read passages and have the English transliteration underneath as a cheat sheet. Despite not knowing much vocab, I learned the alphabet quickly this way. Then vocab helped later on because it made words more recognizable.
I was late to this game of "going backwards" to improve my memory and understanding of what I read and wrote. Being raised by two technologically forward engineers, we jumped on the palm-pilot/laptops/tablets/phones/e-readers bandwagon very early.
5 years ago I started turning back to calligraphy, fountain pens, and hand writing. I buy books and fill up my bookshelf. It wasn't just for the memory recall, it was the pleasantness of writing.
I can't begin to tell you just how wonderful it is to write with a nice fountain pen. This was the culmination of writing instruments prior to the bastardization caused by modern cheap pens/pencils. I heartily recommend folks pick up an affordable Parker pen or similar and try it. It's also a great stress reliever to just free form thoughts onto a page, and you'll remember what your wrote later in the day!
One other bonus, your handwriting improves. I had to fill out some government forms recently. The online forms were cutting off any addresses longer than 24 characters, so I filled it out by hand. Went into the offices to submit and after the clerk saw my papers they went, "oh my goodness, you have incredible handwriting!"
Besides the learning, recall, etc, there are so many side benefits. Read and write physically y'all!
People wishing to try experiencing the pleasure of fountain pens but avoid it because they are afraid of going down a rabbit hole can use the following: get one Platinum Preppy pen with black ink and either Medium (if you like thick, felt pen like lines), Fine (comparable to a regular ballpoint), or Extra Fine (if you keep your pencils extra sharp or normally use .38 or smaller pens) for $10 or less, and any notepad made in Vietnam for less than $5 at Walmart/CVS/Michaels/Amazon/etc. You don’t need to read any product reviews to try this out for around $15.
Why I recommend it this way: I enjoy pens and have done illustration and calligraphy professionally but the Preppy has essentially replaced my other pens except when I specifically want something special. Writing with it still feels special, mind, but to enjoy things you also shouldn’t be afraid of damaging or losing something precious, nor should you miss a day of writing because you didn’t want to carry some fancy instrument in your hoodie pocket or whatever. As for the pads, fountain pens are wet compared to other types and some paper will make it impossible to use or enjoy. Vietnamese paper is cheap, available, and known to work well for this.
I picked up a preppy a couple of weeks ago. I got a fine nib, and after seeing how it writes I should have gotten extra fine, but the biggest issue I'm having is that it seems to want the pen held at a shallower angle than what works for me. If I fold my pinky and ring finger under in an uncomfortable position then I can get my grip close enough to the page that it consistently inks, but otherwise it isn't consistent, which felt frustrating rather than special. I ended up switching over to the $2 Zebra ball point pen that I bought at the same time, and have had a much better experience, including pen on paper dragging that feels just as smooth as the fountain pen.
I would like to have a good experience with the Preppy, but I don't know if this is just how it will be because I have large hands, or if I'm doing something wrong, or just got a defective pen. What is the pleasure that I should be looking for? Is there still hope I can experience it, perhaps with a different pen?
I love handwriting. As in, I hand-lettered every single one of the hundreds of diagrams in my two books [1]. I am also a sucker for nice pens and fancy paper. Office supply stores are like toy stores for me. (What can I say, I was a teacher's pet growing up.)
So I am 1000% the kind of person to get into fountain pens.
But I'm also a lefty. :(
I know it is possible to learn to use a fountain pen while writing left-handed, but it's a serious uphill battle and is never as easy and natural as being right-handed. Every now and then, I'm tempted to learn to write mirrored.
Ooof, yeah, left handed with a fountain pen is not easy. I once foolishly went left handed "just to try" and ended up with a beautiful shade of dark green ink all over my palm and wrist. The ink just doesn't dry fast enough, even with premium papers. Maybe there are new inks that work well for this?
It sounds like you've found some other pens that work well for you if you managed to hand draw hundreds of diagrams. I do feel sad you won't be able to fully experience "the glide" you get from fountain pens though. It's a real treat.
(also, side note, thanks for writing Game Programming Patterns, Crafting Interpreters, they are excellent books!)
You don't really have to learn it, a couple minutes of concerted effort will get you most of the way there
When I first started I'd say I was up to my normal speed within about half a page of Freeform journaling, initially it took conscious effort but then the brain just kinda went "oh."
Tangent: after that first day I had the thought to hold the resulting pages up to a mirror. The backwards writing was disconcertingly neater than my regular. (And remained that way even as I got faster and lazier)
Also for some unknown reason I formed the lowercase "A" entirely differently - everything else was the same..
I remember the diagrams in Crafting Interpreters and thinking what a great application of hand-done diagrams it was. So glad you did them that way.
Also left handed, BTW. If you're ever interested in going it even more old-school -- dip pens with India or Sumi ink are the absolute bomb. The ink is blacker than anything I've seen except perhaps in intaglio/etchings -- it can be made darker than fountain pen ink because there is no fear of clogging. Yeah, there's a bit of cleanup after every use, but very satisfying too, for some use cases.
Not a fountain pen, but the LAMY Safari (Rollerball) and Zebra Sarasa Dry (Gel) pens will each dry fast enough to write left-handed with most papers.
I find the typical rollerball to be far more conducive to cursive writing than a ball-point, as very little pressure is needed to release the ink. Kind of a "fountain-pen lite"
I am an Urdu speaker, which is written RTL. Right-handed people never have any trouble writing Urdu, but left-handed people struggle to write Urdu. I don't exactly know why.
FWIW: I went to an unusual grade school which required us 3rd graders to use fountain pans. There were many stained fingers and homeworks, but yet, they insisted on using what seemed to us archaic devices. Fast forward to now, decades later, and I have recently rediscovered fountain pens and what a delight it is to use one compared to the cheap disposable ball point. I am using an inexpensive Pilot Metropolitan pen and, given a choice, will never go back to ball points.
My story is similar to yours -- forced to use fountain pens (in grade 4-5, IIRC). Perpetually ink-stained fingers, and absolutely hated these irrational rules back then. Decades later, I came back to fountain pens and now love the feel of writing with them. My handwriting also improved tremendously -- when you deeply enjoy writing, you put effort into it, and you see results :)
Just wanted to +1 on physical books and writing with fountain pens.
My daily routine involves journaling in the morning with a Pilot Custom 823 in a blank Midori notebook, doing all of my work planning + notes with a Lamy 2000 in a Traveler’s Company notebook built-up in a way that works for me, and reading physical books, marking them up with a Kaweco brass mechanical pencil. It’s flexible, keeps me on task, keeps me organized, and I feel like I’m getting better value for my time, if that makes sense.
I’ve tried so many different ways of trying to handle these things digitally, but have found that for me it’s best to use pen and paper for these sorts of things in conjunction with digital counterparts mainly for reminders and archives.
That's great and I have no doubt it's nice writing with a good fountain pen but people should not get caught up in that they HAVE to write with some expensive fountain pen or mechanical pencil. Most of the time, a basic pencil and notepad will work just fine.
Not that that is what you do but people may read your comment and get fixated that it has to be a nice fountain pen or mechanical pencil.
You ought to be able to find a pen without a scratching feeling. The nib, the ink, and the paper can all contribute to a scratchy feeling. If you have been trying with an old pen, the nib could be damaged, or the ink too dried out.
If you are writing with a new pen the you might need a wider writing nib, a medium or above is your best bet. In pen reviews, look for how "wet" the pen writes.
I like writing very tiny letters and use a Pilot extra-fine, an it is can be scratchy, but I replaced the medium nib my Pilot Metro was sold with. It was not scratchy with the medium.
Certain brands like Platinum and Sailor are known for this — it’s somewhat euphemistically known as ‘feedback’ and some people like it. I’ve been partial to it in the past.
Pilot is an example of a brand known for smoother writing. Try one!
There is also the possibility that the nib is just out of alignment. You might need to look at it under a loupe and perform some adjustments… there are various guides online or you can pay an expert to do it.
Yeah, that comes down to the nib. Not all pens are scratchy. I sorta like a sweet spot of a little bit of scratchiness.
I have an old pilot metropolitan that is almost too smooth. I even dropped it once and had to re-form the nib. I usually use a pilot v5 rolling ball pen with the water based ink which is a little scratchy but requires very little pressure compared to a normal ballpoint.
Holy cow I feel seen. All throughout school I was plagued by that “nails on chalkboard” feeling that I get from using a pencil. Pens don’t typically give me that feeling thankfully.
Everyone's hand and preferences are different. Just look at a guide like this [1] and buy one within you budget. You will eventually learn what works for you.
For Parker's, there are just so many options. However, it can be extremely pricey to buy-and-try or your local store may not have many in stock.
I started with the Parker 51 by trying out a clone by name of Jinhao 51A.
My suggestion is to look for the knock-offs like Jinhao and buy a few of them (you can get 4-5 pens for the price of the cheapest Parker). Then you can try them all and whichever you like most, when you choose to upgrade, buy that variant of Parker it was trying to clone. Or maybe the Jinhao ends up good enough for you and you stick with that, nothing wrong with a nice affordable pen!
Also, the Jinhao's make pretty gifts for small occasions, they're very colourful and elegant, if you upgrade away from them, can gift them to friends/family.
There are nice cheap pens out there, but fountain pens are beautiful and separating the choice of ink from the choice of pen gives a lot of flexibility.
What’s particularly wrong with appreciating tools? Why brand it ‘fetishisation’? For me, a good fountain pen is a work of art; the fact it happens to be useful for work is an added bonus.
1. Tools are important. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
2. There are cheap and good fountain pens. There are disposable fountain pens. Fountain pens are not some premium product, they're just a different type of pen (like wooden pencil vs mechanical pencil).
The main tradeoffs compared to ball point pens is that they write more smoothly and require less pressure (thus better for people with weak hands like children or elderly) but they can dry out if left uncapped or unused.
I wonder if it also had to do with the fact that handwriting is slower.
Which means that you generally hold the concept in your working memory for longer than typing. Which often times does not require the concept to be held in working memory at all because typing speed matches reading speed.
I also wonder if looking down at the page as you write vs looking up at the board. Constantly looking up and down is like a high frequency spaced repetition game, whereas the latter is a more motor/mechanical practice.
In addition to holding the concept in working memory for longer, writing being slower also leads to better refinement of the ideas as you write as the brain has more time to process the thought being written down.
My own personal and completely based on anecdote opinion on note taking is that I can write notes while paying attention to something else, but typing has a much higher cognitive load, so more of my attention is focused on operating a keyboard vs. listening.
I'm also someone that needs good visual organization to really study and learn things, so a habit I built in college was to write all of my notes, and then later transcribe them to computer. That helped it flow through my brain twice, organize the notes, and also do so when my sole task was working with the notes rather than capturing notes AND listening at the same time.
Maybe it's because I have terrible and slow handwriting, or because I had a job transcribing audio interviews as a teenager, but I find it's the complete opposite for me. Writing makes me miss more because I can't keep up.
I had a teacher who told us that when we took notes, we could not just transcribe what the teacher said - we had to take the ideas and write them down in our own words, because we would actually be thinking and learning and not just brainlessly writing it down.
This may well require to much time to do depending upon the material.
I remember a math class that drove me nuts because the instructor used overhead sheets. Usually they were at least limited to output speed of their own hand writing so I could keep up but with the overhead protector I was always scrambling to even get it down.
It depends on the class. If you tried pulling this in organic chemistry you would certainly fail the class. Writing down each and every step the professor is writing on the board for the reaction is critical in that class.
Anyone else remember less from reading an ebook compared to a physical one? This happens to me, and I think it's a similar explanation. I recall less of where I read something in an ebook. But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it. There's simply more of the brain working when I read a physical book, much as handwriting needs more of your body than typing.
The thing that bothers me is that I can't flip back and forth the same way I can with a book.
I'll frequently read something and want to go check something 100 or so pages back. It's so easy with a physical book you hold the place and scan backwards. Much more difficult with an ebook.
I also tend to remember where a tidbit of information was physically. For some reason, details like "~50 pages back around the end of the paragraph in the top-right corner of the right page" will stick in my brain. Then I can quickly scan and parse out keywords to find what I'm looking for. This doesn't work reliably with e-books for me.
This absolutely happens to me. Happy to know I'm not the only one.
> But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
Exactly! And for reasons I cannot explain this helps me with better recall too! Like when I remember something I read, I know roughly where in the book that stuff was physically printed and what other stuff were around it and how they relate to each other.
With ebook too I still know how things relate to each other but the clarity feels much less. I can see it much less in my mind's eye. I don't know why! And it drives me mad!
This is pretty universal, and for some books (think: novels) it's not a major issue, but for referential works, I need the printed copy, and I do not want to switch versions.
The perfection of ebooks will be when you have one physical book with virtual pages that can change, but other than that it feels like a real book.
Maybe the article covers this, but there an ancient memory technique (still used today) of “places and things”, also known as a memory palace. You put objects into spaces in your mind, then walk through that imaginary space to remember things. Turns out that humans are much better at remembering things when the context is spatial. Makes sense that this would apply to reading physical books.
I almost exclusively use spatial memory for programming. It's basically a flowchart I can zoom in or out of. A whole application or problem will be a forest I can walk through or fly above. Everything in a single context to avoid context switches.
When I'm reading a book, some quiet part of me is always aware where in the book I am - from the weight distribution of the book, from the pressure on each palm and finger, from the visual feedback. I know before I pick up the book roughly where I left off, and my fingers often find the page on their own somehow. Recollecting info later, I might not even know exactly what I'm looking for - but I know where it is.
Reading a digital book cuts a lot of that entirely out, and I can't help but feel that it diminishes the experience (before, during, and after) far more than people realize.
> Anyone else remember less from reading an ebook compared to a physical one? [...] But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
This seems weird to me. Does your ebook reader not have a "page" concept? I read China Mieville's Kraken on a Rakuten Kobo about 6 months ago and I distinctly remember the layout of the page where the protagonist does something that shows the culmination of his personal growth throughout the novel, or the page where you find out who is burning the past and why. I also remember distinctly where I was sitting when I read both of those passages.
The biggest difference between the eBook and physical book experiences for me is the smell--I miss the smell of the binding glue when cracking open a new book, or the pleasantly-stale paper smell of an old library book. I'm not saying that the eBook and physical book experiences are equivalent at all. I'm just saying the specific examples you're pointing out seem odd to me.
I'm also highly skeptical of the observations that come from a mind perceiving itself; one of the most striking takeaways from all the neuroscience I've read in the past few decades is that a lot of previous philosophy and psychology theory on how the brain works based on self-perception is blatantly just wrong.
When I remember passages from books I definitely recall whether it was on the left or right leaf, top or bottom or center, and roughly how far through the book it was. If I read it on an e-reader I may have some recall of the vertical positioning but nothing else.
I can take a book from a shelf that I only read once years ago and find a specific passage in a minute or two using this approach. For an ebook I have to try to remember a phrase and search for it, which doesn't always work if I remember just the physicality and sense of it, but not the specific phrasing.
For me, the biggest difference between print and ebooks are:
- I just won't carry around some door-stopper printed books, so I am less likely to read them in printed editions.
- So much of what I want to read isn't in print anymore.
I am in the habit of writing in the margins of print editions as I read, but I haven't started doing this for ebooks. One sometimes remembers the place on the page and page in the book, the smell, the tactile experience, but I can't regard these as real criticisms of ebooks or true benefits of printed editions.
In my experience, having a digital copy of the book is, often enough, the difference between reading it and not reading it.
If you're using multiple devices to read a book, physical memory goes right out the window. The location of a phrase on your phone screen is very unlikely to correspond with its location on a tablet screen. It gets even worse if you change the font size depending on your situation.
I've always had a terrible memory for things I've just read, even pre-smart phone. I always liked the idea of E-books but I couldn't find a solution for easily exportable notes so I gave up and started using small post-its where i'd give a 2-3 word summary and align it with the line on the page.
I still wish I had a unified way to take and export notes. If I could read a book on my ipad, make annotations and highlight, then export those highlighted excerpts + annotations to say, markdown, I'd be so happy.
I've wondered whether this is connected to the olfactory system. Real books have a discernible smell about them, especially older books, and smell is said to be one of the best senses for memory recall. Do you remember less from an ebook because your ebook isn't smelly?
Yes. I find the physical book provides context, as I can feel how far into the book I am. So if in need to find something later I know roughly where to turn and what the pages looked like as I fan through.
With audiobooks, I find I remember better if I’m walking somewhere new. It also provides context. I can recall details of the book by remembering where I was walking when I heard it.
If that lack of spaciality bothers you, you could try reading ebooks on a bigger format. Using a 13" ipad or Surface, or another tablet/reader for instance allows to have two pages side by side (or one A4 full page) which is pretty close to the physical book format.
I can relate. I thought it was due distractions, but I usually get more distracted at the phone than I do at the computer and, yet, I get worse results out of my readings at the latter. An e-paper based ebook reader didn't improve the situation either.
As someone with dysgraphia (more info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia), I often find the discussion about handwriting both amusing and sometimes disheartening. I understand that handwriting may help some people learn better, but I have found many other effective learning methods. It was liberating when I first managed to get my school teacher to accept printed homework. I'm not keen on articles that label handwriting as the "best" method, mainly because I believe there are many other equally valid approaches.
I'd go a bit further: for those who have terrible handwriting (or spelling, or both) typing has played a big role in landing an education or job. Before modern word processing it was much harder for these people to be taken seriously.
I don't doubt that writing by hand can be very useful to many, maybe even most people, but it's not for everyone.
This reads like the usual beat about students taking notes in school. As usual the title and article conclusions are wide reaching, while the study itself is only done in a very limited context on a very specific scope.
PS: Is there so much research just to counter cursive getting removed from school requirements ? What is the reason for so much focus on such a seemingly limited subject when there's basically no research on professionals using keyboards instead of pens.
I understand the "appeal" of writing by hand but here is the thing.
I am told when I was a kid, I started to have a dispensation for writing with my left hand but mums being mums "corrected" me to use my right hand.
This is one theory but I have never enjoyed writing by hand. I just suck at it. I remember all my school life was like "improve your handwriting".
Covid gave me an interesting experience. I had a short exam, like 2 hours during the time and I opted for " remote proctoring".
Suddenly, for the first time in my life I was like "now its my time to shine"
I learned to type from when i was a kid because my handwriting was a physical disability and with typing, I could simply wish that problem away.
This has progressed in my professional career where I can just type for hours at end comfortably but I cannot write my name in block letters on a form. I ask one of my coworkers to do it for me. (Its that bad)
Readit News
Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39364576 - Feb 2024 (191 comments)
The new study cited is a Norwegian small-sample-size study of college kids typing vs. writing Pictionary words while wearing an EEG. Not learning, I would point out.
What they observe is more connectivity between brain regions when they write, because well, writing and uses more of your brain. And then they make this immense leap to, "and it seems like the connectivity we see when people learn, ergo it's good for learning."
Then Scientific American amplifies it because it's a divisive non-falsifiable thing that people (like me, admittedly) get weirdly invested in. This is bad science and bad science comms. Show me how you decided that this connectivity pattern was evidence of learning when observed in a non-learning context—that's the crux of the issue.
I suspect you can't "see" learning of the type that college kids do in an hour-long EEG session. It unfolds over days, months, years.
Deleted Comment
5 years ago I started turning back to calligraphy, fountain pens, and hand writing. I buy books and fill up my bookshelf. It wasn't just for the memory recall, it was the pleasantness of writing.
I can't begin to tell you just how wonderful it is to write with a nice fountain pen. This was the culmination of writing instruments prior to the bastardization caused by modern cheap pens/pencils. I heartily recommend folks pick up an affordable Parker pen or similar and try it. It's also a great stress reliever to just free form thoughts onto a page, and you'll remember what your wrote later in the day!
One other bonus, your handwriting improves. I had to fill out some government forms recently. The online forms were cutting off any addresses longer than 24 characters, so I filled it out by hand. Went into the offices to submit and after the clerk saw my papers they went, "oh my goodness, you have incredible handwriting!"
Besides the learning, recall, etc, there are so many side benefits. Read and write physically y'all!
Why I recommend it this way: I enjoy pens and have done illustration and calligraphy professionally but the Preppy has essentially replaced my other pens except when I specifically want something special. Writing with it still feels special, mind, but to enjoy things you also shouldn’t be afraid of damaging or losing something precious, nor should you miss a day of writing because you didn’t want to carry some fancy instrument in your hoodie pocket or whatever. As for the pads, fountain pens are wet compared to other types and some paper will make it impossible to use or enjoy. Vietnamese paper is cheap, available, and known to work well for this.
I would like to have a good experience with the Preppy, but I don't know if this is just how it will be because I have large hands, or if I'm doing something wrong, or just got a defective pen. What is the pleasure that I should be looking for? Is there still hope I can experience it, perhaps with a different pen?
So I am 1000% the kind of person to get into fountain pens.
But I'm also a lefty. :(
I know it is possible to learn to use a fountain pen while writing left-handed, but it's a serious uphill battle and is never as easy and natural as being right-handed. Every now and then, I'm tempted to learn to write mirrored.
[1]: https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2020/04/05/crafting-craft...
It sounds like you've found some other pens that work well for you if you managed to hand draw hundreds of diagrams. I do feel sad you won't be able to fully experience "the glide" you get from fountain pens though. It's a real treat.
(also, side note, thanks for writing Game Programming Patterns, Crafting Interpreters, they are excellent books!)
When I first started I'd say I was up to my normal speed within about half a page of Freeform journaling, initially it took conscious effort but then the brain just kinda went "oh."
Tangent: after that first day I had the thought to hold the resulting pages up to a mirror. The backwards writing was disconcertingly neater than my regular. (And remained that way even as I got faster and lazier)
Also for some unknown reason I formed the lowercase "A" entirely differently - everything else was the same..
Brains are weird.
Also left handed, BTW. If you're ever interested in going it even more old-school -- dip pens with India or Sumi ink are the absolute bomb. The ink is blacker than anything I've seen except perhaps in intaglio/etchings -- it can be made darker than fountain pen ink because there is no fear of clogging. Yeah, there's a bit of cleanup after every use, but very satisfying too, for some use cases.
I find the typical rollerball to be far more conducive to cursive writing than a ball-point, as very little pressure is needed to release the ink. Kind of a "fountain-pen lite"
Those diagrams are beautiful, and I think anyone who picks up that book and holds it in their hand can appreciate the work that went into it.
Thank you for creating it!
https://noodlersink.com/product-tag/fast-drying/
My daily routine involves journaling in the morning with a Pilot Custom 823 in a blank Midori notebook, doing all of my work planning + notes with a Lamy 2000 in a Traveler’s Company notebook built-up in a way that works for me, and reading physical books, marking them up with a Kaweco brass mechanical pencil. It’s flexible, keeps me on task, keeps me organized, and I feel like I’m getting better value for my time, if that makes sense.
I’ve tried so many different ways of trying to handle these things digitally, but have found that for me it’s best to use pen and paper for these sorts of things in conjunction with digital counterparts mainly for reminders and archives.
Not that that is what you do but people may read your comment and get fixated that it has to be a nice fountain pen or mechanical pencil.
Am I using them wrong? Using the wrong brand/type?
If you are writing with a new pen the you might need a wider writing nib, a medium or above is your best bet. In pen reviews, look for how "wet" the pen writes.
I like writing very tiny letters and use a Pilot extra-fine, an it is can be scratchy, but I replaced the medium nib my Pilot Metro was sold with. It was not scratchy with the medium.
Jetpens has some 5 pen sampler pack if you're are $25 curious. https://www.jetpens.com/JetPens-Beginner-Fountain-Pen-Sample...
Pilot is an example of a brand known for smoother writing. Try one!
There is also the possibility that the nib is just out of alignment. You might need to look at it under a loupe and perform some adjustments… there are various guides online or you can pay an expert to do it.
I have an old pilot metropolitan that is almost too smooth. I even dropped it once and had to re-form the nib. I usually use a pilot v5 rolling ball pen with the water based ink which is a little scratchy but requires very little pressure compared to a normal ballpoint.
Is there a particular Parker model you’d recommend?
[1] https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-Best-Fountain-Pens-for-Ever...
I started with the Parker 51 by trying out a clone by name of Jinhao 51A.
My suggestion is to look for the knock-offs like Jinhao and buy a few of them (you can get 4-5 pens for the price of the cheapest Parker). Then you can try them all and whichever you like most, when you choose to upgrade, buy that variant of Parker it was trying to clone. Or maybe the Jinhao ends up good enough for you and you stick with that, nothing wrong with a nice affordable pen!
Also, the Jinhao's make pretty gifts for small occasions, they're very colourful and elegant, if you upgrade away from them, can gift them to friends/family.
What’s particularly wrong with appreciating tools? Why brand it ‘fetishisation’? For me, a good fountain pen is a work of art; the fact it happens to be useful for work is an added bonus.
2. There are cheap and good fountain pens. There are disposable fountain pens. Fountain pens are not some premium product, they're just a different type of pen (like wooden pencil vs mechanical pencil).
The main tradeoffs compared to ball point pens is that they write more smoothly and require less pressure (thus better for people with weak hands like children or elderly) but they can dry out if left uncapped or unused.
Which means that you generally hold the concept in your working memory for longer than typing. Which often times does not require the concept to be held in working memory at all because typing speed matches reading speed.
I also wonder if looking down at the page as you write vs looking up at the board. Constantly looking up and down is like a high frequency spaced repetition game, whereas the latter is a more motor/mechanical practice.
In addition to holding the concept in working memory for longer, writing being slower also leads to better refinement of the ideas as you write as the brain has more time to process the thought being written down.
I'm also someone that needs good visual organization to really study and learn things, so a habit I built in college was to write all of my notes, and then later transcribe them to computer. That helped it flow through my brain twice, organize the notes, and also do so when my sole task was working with the notes rather than capturing notes AND listening at the same time.
I remember a math class that drove me nuts because the instructor used overhead sheets. Usually they were at least limited to output speed of their own hand writing so I could keep up but with the overhead protector I was always scrambling to even get it down.
Therefore, understanding/learning == being able to explain to ourselves.
And the way to get better at understanding(aka. explaining the concept to ourselves) is to... repeatedly explain the concept to ourselves.
When you think this way, the Feynman technique is less a "method" to learn. But rather the fundamental truth as to how we all learn.
I'll frequently read something and want to go check something 100 or so pages back. It's so easy with a physical book you hold the place and scan backwards. Much more difficult with an ebook.
> But in a physical book, I often remember that a phrase was at the top or middle or left side of a page, or that I was sitting in a particular chair when I read it.
Exactly! And for reasons I cannot explain this helps me with better recall too! Like when I remember something I read, I know roughly where in the book that stuff was physically printed and what other stuff were around it and how they relate to each other.
With ebook too I still know how things relate to each other but the clarity feels much less. I can see it much less in my mind's eye. I don't know why! And it drives me mad!
The perfection of ebooks will be when you have one physical book with virtual pages that can change, but other than that it feels like a real book.
When I'm reading a book, some quiet part of me is always aware where in the book I am - from the weight distribution of the book, from the pressure on each palm and finger, from the visual feedback. I know before I pick up the book roughly where I left off, and my fingers often find the page on their own somehow. Recollecting info later, I might not even know exactly what I'm looking for - but I know where it is.
Reading a digital book cuts a lot of that entirely out, and I can't help but feel that it diminishes the experience (before, during, and after) far more than people realize.
This seems weird to me. Does your ebook reader not have a "page" concept? I read China Mieville's Kraken on a Rakuten Kobo about 6 months ago and I distinctly remember the layout of the page where the protagonist does something that shows the culmination of his personal growth throughout the novel, or the page where you find out who is burning the past and why. I also remember distinctly where I was sitting when I read both of those passages.
The biggest difference between the eBook and physical book experiences for me is the smell--I miss the smell of the binding glue when cracking open a new book, or the pleasantly-stale paper smell of an old library book. I'm not saying that the eBook and physical book experiences are equivalent at all. I'm just saying the specific examples you're pointing out seem odd to me.
I'm also highly skeptical of the observations that come from a mind perceiving itself; one of the most striking takeaways from all the neuroscience I've read in the past few decades is that a lot of previous philosophy and psychology theory on how the brain works based on self-perception is blatantly just wrong.
I can take a book from a shelf that I only read once years ago and find a specific passage in a minute or two using this approach. For an ebook I have to try to remember a phrase and search for it, which doesn't always work if I remember just the physicality and sense of it, but not the specific phrasing.
- I just won't carry around some door-stopper printed books, so I am less likely to read them in printed editions.
- So much of what I want to read isn't in print anymore.
I am in the habit of writing in the margins of print editions as I read, but I haven't started doing this for ebooks. One sometimes remembers the place on the page and page in the book, the smell, the tactile experience, but I can't regard these as real criticisms of ebooks or true benefits of printed editions.
In my experience, having a digital copy of the book is, often enough, the difference between reading it and not reading it.
I still wish I had a unified way to take and export notes. If I could read a book on my ipad, make annotations and highlight, then export those highlighted excerpts + annotations to say, markdown, I'd be so happy.
With audiobooks, I find I remember better if I’m walking somewhere new. It also provides context. I can recall details of the book by remembering where I was walking when I heard it.
I don't doubt that writing by hand can be very useful to many, maybe even most people, but it's not for everyone.
Precedent variations:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24714990
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27810632
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37909756
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8760392
PS: Is there so much research just to counter cursive getting removed from school requirements ? What is the reason for so much focus on such a seemingly limited subject when there's basically no research on professionals using keyboards instead of pens.
I am told when I was a kid, I started to have a dispensation for writing with my left hand but mums being mums "corrected" me to use my right hand.
This is one theory but I have never enjoyed writing by hand. I just suck at it. I remember all my school life was like "improve your handwriting".
Covid gave me an interesting experience. I had a short exam, like 2 hours during the time and I opted for " remote proctoring".
Suddenly, for the first time in my life I was like "now its my time to shine"
I learned to type from when i was a kid because my handwriting was a physical disability and with typing, I could simply wish that problem away.
This has progressed in my professional career where I can just type for hours at end comfortably but I cannot write my name in block letters on a form. I ask one of my coworkers to do it for me. (Its that bad)