Why Johnny Can’t Write

Inad­e­qua­cies of Writ­ing Instru­ment Design and Man­u­fac­ture is the fol­low-up to Geoff Roe’s ear­li­er Tech­ni­cal His­to­ry. Sim­i­lar­ly to that book, this one is quite brief. The mate­r­i­al orig­i­nat­ed as a lec­ture to the Writ­ing Instru­ment Soci­ety in Lon­don. Not only do I have a late start on my chal­lenge to read fifty-two books this year, I’m also quite a bit behind in get­ting these reviews out. So here in the end of March I’m report­ing the first of fifty-two books this year, one that accord­ing to my notes I fin­ished on Feb­ru­ary 27^th. I’ve got more than a lit­tle catch­ing up to do. 

Though nar­row­er in scope than Roe’s His­to­ry, Inad­e­qua­cies does not get lost in specifics or the­o­ry. Rather, Inad­e­qua­cies is a prag­mat­ic look at what can and com­mon­ly does go wrong in the process of deliv­er­ing ink to paper with the vari­eties of mate­ri­als used to do so. 

Roe’s the­sis is that many mak­ers of foun­tain pens now regard qual­i­ty con­trol as an unnec­es­sary expense. Many foun­tain pens are giv­en as gifts and nev­er writ­ten with, so the con­se­quences to these com­pa­nies who release very pret­ty pens that write poor­ly or unre­li­ably are few. We the cus­tomers end up being the first and only line of qual­i­ty con­trol. Roe states in his open­ing para­graphs that the major­i­ty of new pens he has pur­chased have to be returned for ser­vice imme­di­ate­ly. It may be a bit of hyper­bole, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s right. Even with my rather mod­est col­lec­tion I’ve become a lit­tle too famil­iar with the ser­vice cen­ters of some major penmakers. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, while Roe does a ter­rif­ic job of explain­ing the short­com­ings of pens and the chal­lenges of mak­ing a pen that will write well, he does­n’t offer much new in the way of solu­tions. We are left with an asser­tion that seems like com­mon knowl­edge for oth­er prod­ucts as well: we must pay close atten­tion and hold the mak­ers of these pens account­able every time they fail us. 

Roe pro­vides a spot-check method for inspect­ing a foun­tain pen and sug­gests that we each per­form such a check before pur­chas­ing a par­tic­u­lar pen—not just a sam­ple of the same mod­el, but the actu­al pen which we are to buy. He also calls on man­u­fac­tur­ers to per­form his nib inspec­tion before let­ting a pen out of the fac­to­ry. It’s a sug­ges­tion both laugh­ably unlike­ly to be heed­ed by the big pen­mak­ers and sad that we as con­sumers would be called on to demand basic qual­i­ty con­trol from the mak­ers of pre­mi­um products. 

There is a solu­tion to this prob­lem, which Roe does not address direct­ly although it is in the spir­it of his sug­ges­tions. That is that we buy all our pens from deal­ers like Richard Binder or John Mot­tishaw who will inspect, test, and even adjust a nib before send­ing out a pen. We of course can also choose not to buy from the pen­mak­ers that pass on shod­dy goods at lux­u­ry prices. There are pen­mak­ers who do give atten­tion to each and every pen. It often makes for greater expense, but it should be well worth it not to have to send the major­i­ty of our pens back for repair or adjustment. 

Inad­e­qua­cies of Writ­ing Instru­ment Design and Man­u­fac­ture, Goeff Roe 

5/10

Self-pub­lished sta­pled 2004 

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18 pages 

ISBN 095298671X