The quest for the best writing tool, a spinoff

Even though I turned forty years old in 2024, I thankfully feel like a kid discovering new things on a regular basis. Whether they are weird and fascinating facts,¹ or common knowledge that blows my mind and makes me look foolish for not knowing about it earlier.²

Among all of these things I learned recently, one stood out. Writing with the left hand causes issues with many pens.

Most tools for writing by hand — rollerballs, ballpoints, fountain pens, &c. — are indeed designed to be operated by a right-hand user, it makes sense, but I never thought about their “handedness.” I knew about can openers, but pens?

An article by Noah B. von Hatten summarises one of the issues that appear with fountain pens in particular:

The second problem faced by left-handed fountain pen writers is false starting. That is, when the first stroke of a word or letter gets missed, because the ink didn’t start flowing right away.

I also experience this with all rollerballs, and most ballpoints, but I can’t explain why or be sure that other left-handed users feel the same. Maybe it is because I am a left-handed “overwriter” (writing with my hand above the written line, the tip pointing towards me)?

In 2025, most manufacturers still treat left-handers as a niche market, and some don’t even pretend to care. Many who offer writing tools “designed” for left-handers probably assume most buyers don’t care either, since most of us lefties spend our lives adapting to tools made for right-handers anyway, pens included.

This is how we end up with a full range of products supposedly better for lefties, usually sold at a premium. Like fountain pens with a mirrored handle (yes, ergonomics can feel patronising), while the rest of the mechanics remain unchanged: very few manufacturers adapt the design of the nib, for instance. We also have rollerball pens with quick-dry ink, so we don’t leave smudges when writing from left to right. And that’s about it. How dare we complain?

If I understood correctly, the physics of writing apparently differ greatly depending on whether you use your left or right hand. Right-handers pull the pen across the paper about 90% of the time, while lefties then to push instead.

I am not sure about this — call this my hypothesis — but I think that this difference in use is the explanation behind many of my issues. If pens are designed with a pulling motion in mind, I guess a pushing motion damages them or diminishes their writing performance much faster than it was built for, in the same way pressing too hard on paper can do.

All my life, I never quite understood why rollerballs were so popular. It turns out that the answer is that rollerballs are indeed truly great if you pull the tip across the paper, as a right-hand user. As a left-handed user, all of mine quickly and irreversibly turned to crap. For a long time I thought that maybe my way of writing was wrong, and that rollerballs were a pointless and frustrating option.

Why did I keep buying them you ask? Well, for a quick note or doodle, or during the first few days of use, the issue can be hard to notice; that’s why when I try pens in stationery shops, I can be fooled easily. After a certain amount of time pushing instead of pulling, the initial grace and efficiency fade, as if the tip of the pen is already wearing out.

When I left my job at Xiaomi, I got a really nice platinum-coated Caran d’Ache pen as a leaving gift. This brand seemingly offers the best quality when it comes to pens, or “writing instruments” as they describe it. The pen itself is great, but I ended up being a bit disappointed by the writing experience, which didn’t feel much better than a much, much cheaper Bic pen.

I had the same experience with the much-praised Zebra Sarasa: after a few days, the pen no longer feels as smooth, and I end up leaving that pen in the back of the drawer, like the unsharpened knife we all keep around. Same story with a really nice pen that my sister gifted me for my birthday: the pen itself is very nice, with a satisfying oily mechanism and materials that feel great to the touch, but the writing experience is subpar.

The brand of the pen or the refill doesn’t matter. The best example of this personal frustration might be illustrated by the lovely Xiaomi Mijia Sign Pens (yes, they make pens too). I love their design — especially in matte white — and I still own a few of the now hard-to-find-in-France items, but the seemingly great rollerballs embedded in it (from the Swiss company Premec, coupled with Mikuni ink) soon end up dry and rough against the paper like the others, skipping parts of letters and barely writing in a few directions, which never happens to my right-handed wife using the same pen (even if she prefers using the standard Muji gel pens).

Because of these problems, I barely use pens and paper anymore. Today, Things and BBEdit handle most of my tasks and writing needs. For the remaining times when I need to jot something down, my lovely mechanical pencil, made of ABS (the same plastic used for Lego bricks), works fine.³

But as someone who loves pens as objects and cares about quality, engineering, and design, this situation is very frustrating. Ballpoints work fine, but they are just ballpoints; I seemingly can’t upgrade my writing experience. It’s a bit like caring about Mac apps and being forced to use Electron-based ones. Like loving croissants but only being able to eat the ones from the supermarket instead of the ones freshly baked at the local bakery.

I plan to try the Uni Jetstreams line of pens, as they come highly recommended, and I will also give a shot to a new fountain pen.⁴ I’ll need to check how the left-handed tip design works and which manufacturers offer true left-handed options, and learn a thing of two. From the same article by Noah B. von Hatten:

Many left-handed writers are encouraged to avoid fountain pens. However, this isn’t necessary. There are methods by which the fountain pen can be an excellent tool for left-handed writers as much as for right-handed ones. The problem, most of us aren’t taught how to use them in a way that suits us, because those teaching us don’t know how to.

Being left-handed makes pens a rather isolating passion, because for us, the amount of consumer feedback and recommendations to be found on the internet is statistically eight to ten times smaller: searching Wirecutter for “left-handed” is rather disappointing, for instance.

Facing poor pen options and a frustrating hand-writing writing experience may be the reason why I love software so much: I get to use the products exactly as they were designed.