Notebook and ink mistakes beginners make at home

Almost every complaint about fountain pens at home comes from one of a short list of errors. None of them is about taste. They are procedural, they repeat, and each has a fix that costs nothing. If your writing is disappointing you, work down this list before you change anything you own.

What to take away

• Testing a new ink on unknown paper tells you nothing about the ink.
• Closing a notebook before the ink has dried is the most common single fault.
• Left-handed writers need a hand position change, not a different pen.
• Judging color under a lamp and then in daylight will give two different answers.

The eight errors

• Buying five inks before settling one paper. Change one variable at a time or you learn nothing.
• Pressing. Fountain pens need almost no force, and pressure widens the line and pushes ink into the fibers.
• Closing the book too soon, which offsets the wet line onto the facing page.
• Writing on the wrong side of a sheet that has a felt and a wire side, then blaming the ink.
• Leaving the pen uncapped between paragraphs, so the tip dries and the next stroke skips.
• Diluting a pigment or iron gall ink, which can drop sediment into the feed.
• Storing a filled pen nib down, which lets ink creep into the cap and blot on the next uncapping.
• Judging an ink from a single stroke rather than a paragraph. Shading only appears at length.

The left-handed case

This one is misdiagnosed constantly. Left-handed writers smear because the hand travels over the line just written, not because the pen or the ink is wrong. Educational literature on the left-handed writer has covered this ground for decades, including the position adjustments that help and the long history of the harmful practice of forcing a change of hand.

Three adjustments do most of the work: rotate the paper clockwise so the writing hand stays below the line, hold further up the barrel to see what you are writing, and choose a faster drying ink rather than a wetter one. An underwriting position works better than the hooked overwriting position most people fall into unaided.

Color judged badly

Ink color read under a warm desk lamp and read again by a window are not the same color, and neither is the color a year later. Printing research on how paper and ink interact under light tested the same three inks on two different substrates and found the substrate changed how far the color shifted under ultraviolet exposure. The ink is only half of a lightfastness result. The sheet is the other half.

Practically: judge a new ink in daylight, on the paper you actually use, in a full paragraph. Then put the sample in a window for a month and look again if the writing matters.

Fixing a page that has already gone wrong

Blotting paper lifts wet ink without smearing if you press straight down and lift straight up. Never rub. If a page has offset onto its facing page, slip a sheet of scrap between them for the next hour and leave the book open. If an ink is feathering badly on paper you have to use, switch to a finer nib before you switch inks. The reasoning behind those choices is in the pairing guide, and the surface under the page is a factor too, covered in what to put under the page.

Common questions

My ink looks watery. Is the bottle bad? More likely the paper is absorbent, which spreads the same amount of dye over more area. Try the same ink on a hard sized sheet before you discard it.

How long should I wait before closing a notebook? On hard sized paper, up to thirty seconds for a wet nib. Time it once with a finger drag and you will know your own number.

Can I mix two inks? Only within the same brand and type, and never with pigment or iron gall inks. Mixed dye inks can precipitate and clog a feed.

Is smudging always the paper's fault? No. It is usually dry time, hand position or pressure. Change those first, since they cost nothing.