Essay

On the weight of a nib

A fountain pen is not nostalgia. It is a speed limit the sentence can survive.

A gold fountain-pen nib writing a line of script
Stock photo, Wikimedia Commons

A fountain pen is a speed limit. The hand cannot outrun the feed, and the sentence, given that small mercy, has time to decide whether it meant what it just said.

I do not recommend it as a personality. I recommend it as a tool for the hour when the draft is still shy and the keyboard is already sure.