Close-up detail of President Obama’s signature on a bill, and a pen used for the signing, aboard Air Force One on a flight from Buckley Air Force Base, Denver Colorado to Phoenix, Arizona 2/17/09. Copyright: United States Government Works

“There’s something poetic about grasping a writing instrument and feeling it hit the paper as your thoughts flow through your fingers and pour into words.”Writing Instruments Manufacturers Association (WIMA).

Reading recently about the Writing Instruments Manufacturing Association’s initiative National Handwriting Day, which happens sometime in January, I started to think about school days and the push for “good” handwriting.  My head filled with visions of second grade at St. Patrick’s Elementary School and endless hours of practicing connected circles and lines on newsprint paper. I can see again the good Dominican sister - name sadly forgotten by this misty mind – standing in the front of the room, chalk in hand, providing her dogmatic instruction on cursive writing. There were not only specifics on writing correctly, but there was a whole etiquette involved, and absolutely no discussion of pen or pencil for creative writing or visual arts.  After all, we were a class of about forty-or-so disciplined urban kids in training to be worker-drones when we grew up. It was incumbent on us to be able to work in offices and on assembly lines, which required tolerance for routine and regimentation. There was little need for creativity.

There were lots of rules involved in this business of cursive writing.  It was about more than skill. We were told it was rude (a sin that ranked almost as high as the “original”) to use pencil or black ink for personal communications, for example. There were acceptable formats for laying out letters and addressing envelopes.  Personal notes and cards must be in cursive writing, not printing. Most of the rules involved “good manners” and “not giving offense.”  We had to adhere to the rules as “ladies” and “gentleman,” labels that packed a whopping load of implications and restrictions going far beyond the simple act of writing a letter.

At that time, ballpoint pens had not yet come into wide use, though they’d been invented in 1888 in Argentina. They didn’t start to catch-on in the U.S. until 1945, when Gimbels’ Manhattan Department Store, an American  institution that shut its doors in 1987, held a ballpoint promo and sold 10,000 pens at $12.50 each. This event was rather like the iPhone debut on June 29, 2007. As with the iPhone first-day sale, ballpoint-pen shoppers waited outside Gimbels before it opened to ensure a purchase. Despite the successful 1945 promotion and somewhat elitist pricing, many people still considered it gauche to use a ballpoint pen in the fifties. Writing with a pencil was okay for practice only and for math or bookkeeping. When we were finally graduated from pencil practice to fountain pen mastery, it was cause for celebration.

Now fountain pens were awful and wonderful. Though there were inkwells installed in our little oak desks, they were from another era.  By my time, our Shaeffer fountain pens (fifty-cents each, as I remember) came with tiny plastic ink-cartridges, which you inserted into the pen. You can still buy these very same pens with a selection of nibs to use for calligraphy. The cartridge was easily inserted, though often you had to shake the pen to get the ink to flow. This was a cause of distress to our worn and weary, mostly work-at-home moms. We’d arrive after school with blue ink stains on our little fingers and our white uniform shirts. More work for them. Our redemption: These magical pens transformed less than perfect handwriting into something that occasionally bordered on stunning. Most beautiful of all were our signatures, which seemed a very grown-up thing to have at last.

Eventually, ballpoint pens found a secure cultural acceptance, if only for their relative cleanliness and affordable pricing.  Bics were pedestrian but had the virtue of economy.  Papermates with their double-heart engraving on the clips were top of the line for my economic strata. I had a pink Papermate,which I treasured. Having  discovered that I could write books with pens and pencils, I put my Papermate to hard use. Now I have many pens representing many manufacturers.

Despite the diligent use of my computer, all creative writing starts with a pen, a journal, and notes as I go through the day.  My favorite ballpoint pen now is a “found” pen, which I must have picked up at a doctor’s office.  It promotes the use of Zoloft.  I still use fountain pens for calligraphy. I have assorted pens for notes and sketching: lead pencils, charcoal pencils, and colored pencils.  I no longer worry about the etiquette of the instrument, only its utility as an artistic tool.  I still love my signature, but I wish I didn’t have to use it so much on checks. In this, I feel certain I’m not alone.