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> But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue

I also spent a good amount of time in academia (math & physics), wrote everything by hand (dozens of pages per day), and I, too, suffered from serious hand fatigue & RSI for years, even when using a fountain pen. My recommendations:

- Use as light and as thick a fountain pen as possible. Also, very thin & hard pen tips may be nice but in my experience they make it harder to write.

- Work on your posture (if you don't do that already). Work out your neck and your back in particular to compensate for sitting all day every day. A stiff neck (even if you don't feel that it is stiff) can seriously impact the nerves in your arms & hands and, thus, muscle tension & recovery.

by spudlyo2 hours ago|

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The muscles in your hand and fingers are small and tire pretty easily. The muscles in your arm and shoulder are bigger and can do a lot more work. Back in the day, folks who were taught "business cursive" like the "Palmer Method" were taught to keep their hand mostly static, and to guide the pen strokes using their arm. The way I do it is by planting my forearm on the desk as a pivot point, and moving my arm and shoulder to make the pen move. It took some getting used to, but my handwriting looks about the same as it did before, but no more hand pain.

by BeetleB1 hours ago|

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Yes - I've heard this is the way to go. But will it work for non-cursive?

by spudlyo55 minutes ago|

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I almost exclusively write in cursive, so I don't have any personal experience, but I assume the only real difference is in how often you pick up the pen, so my guess is that it should be roughly the same.

by icepush2 hours ago|

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Learn to write with both hands. When one becomes fatigued switch to the other one.

by hurril2 hours ago|

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I also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?

by BeetleB2 hours ago|

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It changes every few years.

My first was the Pilot Metropolitan. Still a solid pen I recommend.

My next favorite was/is a PenBBS - perhaps the 309 - I don't have it on me at the moment. I replaced the nib with a Goulet nib, and somehow made it extremely smooth. I've not been able to make any other Goulet nib that smooth - somehow got lucky.

These days I'm heavily using a Platinum Plaisir which is also surprisingly smooth (no modifications).

Every time I've paid more than $50 for a pen, it hasn't been worth it. I can't get the ink in my Opus 88 pen to flow consistently. I'm sick of it.

I'm partial to Faber Castell nibs, but the pen I bought had a grip that I didn't like, and I don't want to spend the money to try their other pens.