My grandma used to be completely fluent in shorthand which she learned when she was a secretary in the Land Registry just after the war. Right up until her mind started to go, around age 80, she would make little notes in it rather than using conventional longhand. When I was younger she did try to teach me a bit of it but I could never grasp the concept of writing sounds rather than letters. Would be interesting to give it another try and see how I get on now I am a bit older.
It does sound very interesting. My note taking goes as far as shortening and abbreviating words where I can. It's still messy, but just about gets the job done.
the majority of my hand written notes are numerical or acronym, so i don't know how applicable it'd be. i might grab one of my old notebooks and go through a few pages with a highlighter and see what proportion could feasibly have been shorthandeded
Repetition, repetition, repetition. My dad used to have me in the living room writing each letter for a whole page when I was around 4-6.
When considering what I say about your writing, I'd surely have a stroke at the monitor with his then. And if he thinks yours is scruffy, surely I'd get the belt!
my mum has nice handwriting, my dad has terrible handwriting, but both of them have been doing calligraphy for ~30 years. Once i'd got my basic writing skills down neither of them made much comment on my handwriting despite them both being teachers. i think legibility was the end goal there. I have so far failed to improve mine following it's ten year decline :/
A colleague sparked my interest in pens when we were on a business trip a couple weeks ago. I ended up purchasing a Retro51 Tornado Franklin on his recommendation for an easy rollerball entry in to the pen universe, and must say I've been missing out just using trade-show and promo freebies for all of my working life - it's a lovely pen to use and quite the show-off for a £30 pen. He brought in a subset of his 30 strong collection to the office today to do a bit of showing off of his own though... There are worse ways to part with ~£10k! I wonder if anyone can identify all of them? EDIT: Forgot to have his Meisterstück 149 in frame as well, that one was the active pen for the day.
Red velvet holding bag as well. Awesome. I bought one of those platinum preppy pens as well just to see what the fuss was about....and I really am impressed, writes so well, nearly as well as the TWSBI!!! The TWSBI though is very cool, only had a quick go with it but so far it blows the waterman given to my dad by one of his clients well and truly out of the water. Absolutely worth the 45 odd quid that it cost, such a bargain. Diamine ink is pretty cool as well. I want lots of different colours now!
Ah, ink OCD. Watch as it grabs you by the balls and sucks away your wallet. I just love having all the 2013 MontBlanc colours sat together on my desk far too much. :/
One gripe. The "claret" Diamine is not any way near what I would think claret colour would be. it's more bright purple than anything else: Top: preppy red middle: TWSBI claret diamine bottom: waterman bog standard black international ink Excuse my retard inconsistent writing....
I like it! Inconsistency doesn't bother me that much in anyone's writing, I suppose that's beacuse I've been so inconsistent for so long. What bothers me most is how scrawly I am.
The only gripe I have with the preppy is the nibs are really, really hard. No flex at all from those pens.
Okay....so next venture.... Paper? I've just done some writing in a ruled Moleskine (ruled lines make me such a better writer, I'm in love with these pens now!), and the diamine ink is running through to the other side, despite my TWSBI having an extra fine nib. I hate to think what a medium would be like. So I see Leuchtturm and Rhodia are the two main alternatives - any others of note?
Rhodia paper is very smooth and inks rarely bleed through or feather. The pads are very good on price too considering the quality of the writing surface. Lots of sizes and ruling types too including some notebooks in the webby series
i have a nice rhodia notebook with (i think) clarefontaine paper which is fantastic. the moleskines have a poor rep but i've found a couple of mine are just fine, it appears their paper quality is either inconsistent or from a variety of sources, so it's a bit pot luck.
Moleskine is VERY dependant on pen and ink combination. I have a fine pen which I often use Waterman blue ink in and there is no problem at all and the surface has a nice feel to it. However, another pen is a LOT wetter and even with fast drying Parker Quink I get bleed through instantly. I prefer using Moleskine with pencils as the surface is a little more abrasive than Rhodia which suits a decent pencil very nicely.
on that note, the rotring 600 mech pencil gb on massdrop completed already, and that's what i'll be using in my work moleskine when my last pilot g3 0.7mm black rollerball runs out
