Mmm, pens! A favorite subject!
I prefer a ballpoint pen for writing. Its flow matches the speed of my writing. I have found that the ink pens, such as Uniball, Gel, liquid ink roller balls, etc. flow too fast for me and therefore cause my handwriting to get sloppy.
I love Sharpies and mechanical pencils, too!
Here’s my history on the love of the fountain pen: my mother has a beautiful Parker pen that she used to write with, and I admired it when I was a child. One year for Christmas I received my own Parker fountain pen. I used it all through junior high and high school until something happened to it and I could never get it to work right. After college, I bought my own Schaeffer pen – a lovely, slim design.
This year at Christmas my mother gave me a fountain pen (which I had admired on her desk). The pen is marked Conklin by ENDURA, and belonged to my great-grandfather, Harry Needham. It sits on a marble base, in a holder, and his name is engraved on a small plaque. It dates from the mid 1920’s. He died in 1948 at the age of 75.
I’m digressing here, but I also possess the flute which belong to his father, Winford Needham. Winford played in a Union regiment in the US Civil War. It’s a rosewood flute with an ivory headpiece. Interesting, huh? It’s quite a museum piece.
So anyway, this pen of Harry’s is the kind that has the little lever which draws the ink up into a rubber sac. I haven’t tried it to see if it works, since I’ve assumed it won’t and I don’t want to get it (and me) all messy trying.
To answer AnnaS, I do crosswords in pencil. My friend who is left-handed (a sinister fellow!) prefers the Pilot V-5 pens which, as was noted in an earlier post, dry quickly and do not smudge on his paper or on his hand. Maybe Goethe had a bad back???
