You're absolutely right. I still write with fountain pens and I have several including a Montblanc, Parker and a Waterman. I find that when I write with ballpoint pens my writing deteriorates significantly although I've noticed that for many others this isn't necessary so, as their handwriting is still excellent.
When I was at school I learned to write with a nibbed pen and I always had ink on my fingers (and often on my clothes much to my mother's chagrin); in fact during the early years we weren't allowed to use ballpoint pens at all!
I can only guess the reason for this is that ballpoint pens don't provide the correct kind of tactile feedback that's necessary for good writing. Anyway, it seems it's so for me, I think the reason is that they offer little resistance, and what there is of it is uniform, and with too little variation, thus one needs to better control the pen's movement but fails. On the other hand, fountain pens have a solid tactile resistance that seems to change dynamically as one changes direction when forming characters. (The fact that ballpoint pens were banned at school seems to indicate that others must have the same problem as me. I'd be glad to hear from anyone who's had similar experiences.)
Perhaps this is why I also find that my writing is much more legible when I write with a pencil. For normal day-to-day use, note taking and such I usually use propelling clutch pencils with 0.5 or 0.7mm leads (I've many scattered everywhere).
I am sorry I never learned to write those cursive scripts to which you refer. Whenever I see old historical handwritten documents I never cease to be amazed at the excellent standard of the handwriting, and it's often in this cursive style. Furthermore, from my observation, the older the document then generally the higher the handwriting standard is. In fact, the quality of handwriting in old documents, especially official ones, seems to be almost universally of a high standard (it seems that then clarity was more highly esteemed than it is now.).
It is a shame that nowadays we no longer pay much attention to the standard of our handwriting and that so few recognize or appreciate the fact. I've always believed that humankind loses something significant when a skill that's still useful— or that can be appreciated just for its aesthetic reasons alone—is lost.
The farther back you go the better the cursive, my grand-dad wrote in this beautiful cursive script. My hand-writing always sucked, it got worse with ballpoint pens.
Now I can barely write :-)
When I was at school I learned to write with a nibbed pen and I always had ink on my fingers (and often on my clothes much to my mother's chagrin); in fact during the early years we weren't allowed to use ballpoint pens at all!
I can only guess the reason for this is that ballpoint pens don't provide the correct kind of tactile feedback that's necessary for good writing. Anyway, it seems it's so for me, I think the reason is that they offer little resistance, and what there is of it is uniform, and with too little variation, thus one needs to better control the pen's movement but fails. On the other hand, fountain pens have a solid tactile resistance that seems to change dynamically as one changes direction when forming characters. (The fact that ballpoint pens were banned at school seems to indicate that others must have the same problem as me. I'd be glad to hear from anyone who's had similar experiences.)
Perhaps this is why I also find that my writing is much more legible when I write with a pencil. For normal day-to-day use, note taking and such I usually use propelling clutch pencils with 0.5 or 0.7mm leads (I've many scattered everywhere).
I am sorry I never learned to write those cursive scripts to which you refer. Whenever I see old historical handwritten documents I never cease to be amazed at the excellent standard of the handwriting, and it's often in this cursive style. Furthermore, from my observation, the older the document then generally the higher the handwriting standard is. In fact, the quality of handwriting in old documents, especially official ones, seems to be almost universally of a high standard (it seems that then clarity was more highly esteemed than it is now.).
It is a shame that nowadays we no longer pay much attention to the standard of our handwriting and that so few recognize or appreciate the fact. I've always believed that humankind loses something significant when a skill that's still useful— or that can be appreciated just for its aesthetic reasons alone—is lost.