Choosing Your First Fountain Pen

This arti­cle first appeared in All This Is Mine issue #12 and appears here as it did in print, with the excep­tion of minor fac­tu­al and typo­graph­i­cal corrections. 

In the pub­lished ver­sion, I described the nib size «Extra-Broad» or «EB». The more com­mon des­ig­na­tion is «Dou­ble-Broad» and com­mon­ly abbre­vi­at­ed «BB». I also amend­ed the des­ig­na­tion for «Extra-Fine» to include the abbre­vi­a­tion «XF» in addi­tion to «EF». Both are in com­mon use. Punc­tu­a­tion has been changed to fit splicer.com’s style­book, and link/URL pre­sen­ta­tion which was not pos­si­ble on paper. Illus­tra­tions are dif­fer­ent from those that appeared in print.

While there is a lot to know about foun­tain pens, you don’t need to know a lot. Just write with the nib right side up and don’t push down too hard. It takes only a light touch to make the ink flow, and some more flex­i­ble pens can eas­i­ly be dam­aged if you apply too much pres­sure. Got that? Great! Now you’re an expert! Let’s pick out a pen for you.

Although it would be a cop out to just pick one for you (what would I do with the rest of the page?) I will make one spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tion: the Pilot Var­si­ty. To my knowl­edge, it is the only dis­pos­able foun­tain pen on the mar­ket. You can get them for a few bucks at most office sup­ply stores. They don’t require you to fuss with ink or car­tridges and they write real­ly well. If you want to get a taste of the foun­tain pen expe­ri­ence with­out much com­mit­ment, the Var­si­ty is a great place to start.

There are, how­ev­er, oth­er fac­tors to con­sid­er if you’d like to choose a pen that will suit you. Pref­er­ences are learned over time, but I’ll help you to fast for­ward a lit­tle bit and get your­self a pen to match you. Here are the fac­tors to con­sid­er: size, weight, flex­i­bil­i­ty, breadth, price and composition.

Size and weight: There are two schools of thought about hold­ing a writ­ing instru­ment. Some enjoy feel­ing the weight of a pen in their hands, appre­ci­ate the sub­stance and heft of their writ­ing instru­ment. Oth­ers want the pen to be as close to weight­less as pos­si­ble so that it will effec­tive­ly dis­ap­pear as an exten­sion of their hands. Nei­ther of these per­spec­tives is right or wrong; it’s sim­ply a per­son­al pref­er­ence. How can you tell which you’ll pre­fer? Take a look at some of your oth­er per­son­al items: wrist­watch, razors, even your sil­ver­ware. Close your eyes and feel how they sit in your hand. Do you admire how light and agile they are, or how sol­id and trust­wor­thy they feel? Con­verse­ly, do you have any com­plaints about their heft or lack there­of? It’s not an absolute, but you may pre­fer the same attrib­ut­es in a pen as you do in oth­er items. Per­son­al­ly, I pre­fer heav­ier pens but I don’t like my draw­ing pens to be too heavy. I write with heavy pens but draw with middleweights.

Flex­i­bil­i­ty: Gen­er­al­ly some­one new to foun­tain pens should stick with a stiffer nib. The more flex­i­ble the nib, the more vari­a­tion you can get in your line from apply­ing more or less pres­sure. A very flex­i­ble nib can be hard to con­trol. Most mod­ern foun­tain pens, how­ev­er, are very stiff com­pared to vin­tage pens, and so if the idea of hav­ing more con­trol over your line appeals to you, don’t be afraid to try a more flex­i­ble nib. If buy­ing a pen more than thir­ty or forty years old, how­ev­er, you should look for a «semi­flex» nib at most.

Broad­ness: Foun­tain pens usu­al­ly come in medi­um (M) or fine (F) points. Often you’ll also find broad (B), dou­ble-broad (BB), or extra-fine (EF or XF). Com­mon­ly, F or EF is pre­ferred for draw­ing, F or M for writ­ing. Broad and extra-broad nibs are often ded­i­cat­ed for sig­na­tures. There are also ital­ic and stub nibs for a vari­ety of cal­li­graph­ic pur­pos­es, but these are prob­a­bly not good to start with. How large is your hand­writ­ing? If you tend to write large, try an M or B nib. If you usu­al­ly write very small, or like to draw in very intri­cate detail, go with an F or EF. Note that Japan­ese pens tend to run about a half-size small­er than Amer­i­can or Euro­pean pens.

Price: The pric­etags on foun­tain pens vary great­ly. Indi­vid­u­al­ly hand­craft­ed pens can run into the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, while the afore­men­tioned dis­pos­able will set you back three or four dol­lars. A num­ber of fac­tors go into the pric­ing of a pen, but like most things the law of dimin­ish­ing returns applies. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the high­er the price you pay the high­er qual­i­ty you’ll get, but the greater the price, the less the dif­fer­ence between it and the next high­er or low­er price point. Unless you’re real­ly look­ing to throw out mon­ey, a first foun­tain pen should nev­er exceed a hun­dred dol­lars, and should only exceed thir­ty-five or forty dol­lars if you’re real­ly in love with a par­tic­u­lar pen. Only you know what you can afford, but the only way that you’ll learn to appre­ci­ate the dif­fer­ence between a hun­dred dol­lar pen and a thou­sand dol­lar pen is by using sev­er­al sub-hun­dred dol­lar pens for long enough to get a feel for the characteristics.

For most peo­ple, spend­ing even fifty dol­lars on a pen may seem extrav­a­gant. One thing to keep in mind is that this is a durable pur­chase. Many foun­tain pens stay with their own­ers for decades, while most ball­points or roller­balls get thrown away after a cou­ple of months.

Com­po­si­tion: Pay atten­tion to the use of pre­cious met­als. A gold pock­et clip will not enhance your writ­ing expe­ri­ence, but a gold nib will. Gold is a soft­er met­al than steel, pro­vid­ing a smoother, soft­er feel to your writ­ing. Over a long time, a gold nib will reshape itself sub­tly to match your style of writ­ing. The high­er the gold con­tent, the soft­er the met­al. An 18kt nib is eigh­teen twen­ty-fourths gold, a 14kt nib is com­posed of rough­ly fifty-eight and a half per­cent gold. High­er grades of gold are more expen­sive, but don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean a bet­ter pen. It depends on the design of the nib, but many man­u­fac­tur­ers have deter­mined that 14kt is a more appro­pri­ate com­po­si­tion than more «pure» mix­es. It’s nat­ur­al to think that more is bet­ter, and there are some excel­lent 18kt or high­er pens, but if you want to start with a gold nib, don’t be afraid of one that is «only» 14kt.

With this infor­ma­tion, and some under­stand­ing of which attrib­ut­es are most impor­tant to you per­son­al­ly, you can walk into a pen shop or an online pen forum (I rec­om­mend Foun­tain Pen Net­work) and ask for some­thing spe­cif­ic. You might say, «I’d like some­thing in a semi­flex (flex­i­bil­i­ty) fine point (breadth), light­weight (weight) but not too small (size), prefer­ably in a 14kt nib (com­po­si­tion) but no more than sev­en­ty-five dol­lars (price)». You may not find the exact com­bi­na­tion you’re look­ing for, but you’ll have a start­ing set of para­me­ters from which you can then make com­pro­mis­es about the fac­tors less impor­tant to you.

If at all pos­si­ble, try out the pens you think you want before buy­ing them. While many foun­tain pen users don’t lend pens as a rule, often they will make an excep­tion once they know that you’re inter­est­ed in find­ing out more. Pen shops, sta­tionery stores, and art sup­ply stores often have pens that you can try out. If you find a pen that match­es your list of attrib­ut­es but it does­n’t feel good to write with when you get it in hand, start mod­i­fy­ing your list and don’t buy some­thing until you’re real­ly sure you’ll like it.

A final note about brand or pres­tige: This is not as super­fi­cial as it may seem at first. Most foun­tain pen com­pa­nies have a long his­to­ry and a set of design and pro­duc­tion philoso­phies that have devel­oped over that his­to­ry. Water­man pens hon­or the inven­tor of an impor­tant step for­ward in the devel­op­ment of the pen. Rotring’s foun­tain pens echo their draft­ing and archi­tec­tur­al prod­ucts. And yes, noth­ing says «pow­er and influ­ence» like a Mont­blanc stick­ing out of your pock­et. Still, it pays not to be too far swayed by brand, as it can dou­ble or triple the price of a pen beyond those of com­peti­tors of com­pa­ra­ble qual­i­ty. There is per­haps a fine line between appre­ci­at­ing the his­to­ry of a com­pa­ny and being suck­ered by a brand name.