OK, I’m going to just come out and say it: I don’t like using fountain pens.

I like looking at beautifully made fountain pens. I like handling them. And I love the idea of using fountain pens. But when it actually comes time to put ink on paper, I’ll take a good gel or rollerball pen every time. Heck, even a ballpoint, if it comes to that.

I know, sentiments like that are anathema to most pen geeks. Trust me, I’ve tried to make myself love them as much as the rest of you. But it just hasn’t worked.

To me, my reasons are valid, though.

1. Fountain pens are distracting.

I enjoy the sensory experience of feeling a good pen flow across clean paper. But, I don’t write for that reason. When I’m writing by hand, it’s for the sole purpose of putting ideas or information on paper.

When you use a fountain pen, it’s all about the pen. You have to always be conscious of how you’re holding the pen, how it’s moving, how the ink is flowing. If you let the fountain pen get out of the correct position, it won’t work. You’re forced to focus on the act of writing itself, rather than on the writing.

That’s a problem.

I want as little impediment between my brain and the paper as possible. I want to think it and see the words appear, without having to consider my pen. The beauty of the right gel pen is that you just write. It does its job – moving effortlessly, putting down vivid lines – without demanding attention to itself like a fountain pen does.

2. Fountain pens are too much work.

Look, I already have enough to worry about between car maintenance, taking care of the computer equipment I use to make a living, keeping up with little repairs around my apartment, and the general minutiae of daily living.

Fountain pens have to be cleaned carefully after use, stored just so to prevent damage or leaking, filled before use. I’m not interested in having to worry about my writing instruments like that on top of everything else. It’s just unnecessary hassle and, for me, takes all the fun out of pens.

I enjoy finding and buying and using new pens. But they have to be low-maintenance.

3. Fountain pens are too expensive.

As I’ve said before, my absolute favorite pen to date is the Pentel EnerGel, especially now that it comes in so many different variations. Not one of them costs more than about US$10.

I know that there are good fountain pens to be had for under US$50. But, let’s be honest, most of you are spending hundreds of dollars on fountain pens. Maybe I’m just cheap because the idea of parting with that kind of cash for a pen makes me cringe.

(Of course, having said that, I want and eventually plan to own a Pilot Vanishing Point for occasional use…and we all know how expensive those things are.)

The VP aside, for the cost of a high-end fountain pen, I can buy boxes of my favorite gel and liquid ink pens, all of which I would enjoy using more than a fountain pen. And I won’t end up in tears if I drop one of them on a hard floor.

So, what do you think? Ready to let me have it? Feel free to share your feelings about fountain pens in the comment section below.

OK, pen lovers, how would you like to help put some pens into the hands of kids?

Many of you have heard of an organization called Pens for Kids that collects pens, pencils and other school supplies for shipment to children in Africa. It operates in Denmark, the US and, as of about three years ago, the UK.

We recently reached out to volunteer Malcolm O’Brien, who started and coordinates Pens for Kids UK, to see how the organization is doing and what kind of help they might need.

This is what he told us: Pens aren’t the problem right now. An Irish business that was closing had loads of branded pens that were no longer needed and agreed to give them to Pens for Kids. The charity paid for the pens to be shipped from Ireland to the UK, and now have 220,000 pens sitting in storage, waiting to go to Africa.

The charity just doesn’t have the funds to send them.

We’ve shipped pens from the UK to 8 different countries this year, but it does seem that the recession is hitting hard and donations have been noticeably smaller this year than in previous ones, Malcolm said.

It would be such a waste for those pens to remain in storage instead of getting to the children who could use them.

If you’d like to help, you can donate directly to Pens for Kids UK through the website (look for the PayPal ‘donate’ link at the bottom of the page), or you can buy packs of postcards featuring exotic wildlife at 10 for £2.50. There are other ways to help, as well, and you can even send packages of pens directly to Pens for Kids ambassadors in Africa.

(If you send pens, Malcolm suggested that you clearly mark the package ‘Pens for Kids’ as that can sometimes avoid import fees.)

We’re starting to see some interesting artwork come out of Hurricane Sandy, the monster storm that wrecked the northeast coast of the US a couple weeks ago.

While the storm raged, artists were inspired to pick up pens and paper and create images of what they were experiencing. The results range from simple sketches of families watching the waves come in to surrealistic paintings of iconic news footage.

Here are some examples for your enjoyment. We’re linking, rather than showing the art itself so as to not infringe on the artists’ works.

• Pencil and ink sketch of a man on a plane watching the weather channel, by Bryce Wymer.
• Moleskine drawing of the emotions and frustrations caused by the storm, by Nikira.
• Drawing of Lady Liberty inundated by waves, by Mitra Ghaffari.
• New Jersey governor Chris Christie on newsprint, by Larry.
• 37 pages of an art journal from New York the week of the storm, by Rob Elliot.
• Drawing of a red-headed girl in the midst of the storm, by Peter Ahern.
• Painting of a pancake dangling from a skyscraper crane during the storm, by Dan Lacey.
• Watercolor of a blacked-out Manhattan, by Caroline Hadilaksono.
• Pen-and-ink sketch of trick-or-treaters fleeing the storm, by Christine Liu.
• Sketch of a car crushed by a falling tree, by Julia Sverchuk.

Also, there are a number of artworks for sale to help benefit Hurricane Sandy relief programs. Flavor Wire has a great list of art you can buy to help those affected by the storm, including a classic ‘I (Heart) NY’ t-shirt with the bottom covered in blue water.

If you’re an office professional who wouldn’t mind having a couple of days to swap bad boss stories with other pros, pick up a few office efficiency tips and, most importantly, play with some of the newest ink pens on the market, there’s a place for you next month in London.

The 2012 office* show will be held Sept. 12-13 at National Hall, Olympia. On the list of exhibitors showing off new writing instruments: Stabilo, Pilot and Uniball. There will even be something called the Uniball Cafe – we’re not sure what that is, but we’re picturing hot beverages and free samples of great pens.

This is the third year for the event, billed as ‘the must-attend exhibition and conference for the UK’s PAs, EAs and Office Managers.’ According to organizers, more than 4,000 office workers attend the show, and more than half are there to see stationery.

There is even a party at Planet Hollywood London, although that may be open just to exhibitors. We aren’t clear about that.

This was last year’s show. The Ricky Gervais look-alike in the beginning is pretty good:

Getting in is easy…and free. Just go to the office* show website to register. So, if you can convince the boss, do try to get away for a few days to visit the show. At the very least, you’re likely to pick up a few new pens.

And, if you go, please share your stories and photos with us.

I swear I will never look at Bic ballpoint pens with the same jaundiced eye ever again.

Samuel Silva is an attorney in Portugal whose ‘hobby’ is creating art. He uses Bic pens to draw brilliant, vivid images so lifelike, they look like photographs.

Now I can’t speak for the rest of the Tiger Pens crew, but I couldn’t draw a stick figure if I had to – even a legless, armless one. That’s why those who can draw fascinate me so much…because they have this magical ability that runs from their eyes through their imaginations and down to their fingers to create the most amazing things.

Like this guy. Just look at what he can do.

It bears repeating: This is not a photograph. According to the Huffington Post, it’s a drawing based on an image taken by Russian photographer Kristina Taraina. It took Silva about 30 hours, using seven different colors, to recreate it.

On his DeviantArt page, the 29-year-old attorney says:

Ballpoint pens are as underestimated as they are a powerful medium. It’s not about what you use, it’s about how you use it.

Be sure to visit the page to see even more examples of his work, along with some FAQs on how he does it. Some of his prints are even for sale.

And if you like those, also check out the work of London artist Mark Powell. He uses a simple black Bic to draw incredibly detailed portraits on vintage envelopes, and some of his also have that ‘is it a drawing or a photo’ quality to them.

For more, check out these drawings of the women in his life by Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas (includes nudes), and these by Scottish artist Paul Cadden, whose pencil drawings are so real you expect them to step off the page and start breathing.

Have any favorite artists of your own who work in pen or pencil? Let us know. Better yet, if you have any of your own work you want to show off, send it to us so we can see what you do with your favorite pens and pencils.

(UPDATE: We’re now giving away free Zebra Union Jack ballpoint pens on orders over £12.95. Check it out!)

We’ve been getting a laugh at the response from people on Twitter to the start of this week’s College Basketball Invitational.

The basketball tournament – presented as an alternative for teams that didn’t make it into March Madness – is sponsored by Zebra Pen in the US, where Zebra is not as well-known a name as, say, Pilot.

The general reaction to Zebra’s sponsorship of the CBI has been like this one, from @twittsburgh: “…I seriously thought it was an animal pen.”

OK, so for those of you who are curious, Zebra Pen is exactly what it sounds like, a company that makes ink pens, and quite good ones, at that. And yes, a few, but not nearly all, of the pens are striped.

According to the company, it was started in 1982 in New York as an offshoot of a Japanese import/export outfit called Zebra Co. It’s now based in New Jersey.

Among the pens Zebra is known for:

Sarasa – a gel retractable that is equal to, if not better than, the Pilot G2 for smooth, bold writing.

F-301 – a steel ballpoint pen considered both a great go-to pen for everyday writing, as well as a good tactical pen for self defense. True story.

Surari – a hybrid gel-ballpoint ink pen that lays down smooth and consistent lines, similar to the popular Uniball Jetstream (but with a better-looking design).

As for how Zebra came to choose the CBI, the single-elimination tournament that culminates later this month in a best-of-three championship series, that’s still not completely clear. We asked Zebra’s PR team and received this response:

“We are proud to serve as the official title sponsor of the College Basketball Invitational,” said Clem Restaino, president of Zebra Pen. “This is as great of an opportunity for Zebra Pen as it is for the 16 teams that will compete in this tournament. It will allow us to increase our brand awareness while helping these basketball programs gain the postseason experience necessary in their pursuit to win a national championship. We are looking forward to a great tournament,” he said.

Presumably, by increasing ‘brand awareness,’ the company means two things:

One, sponsorship of the nationally televised CBI during the month of March, when college basketball fever grips millions in the US, will give the Zebra name huge exposure and spark conversations like those taking place on Twitter. And it will likely cost much less than advertising during some of the larger sporting events, such as the NCAA tournament or pro sports.

Two, college basketball means college students, and that means exposure in the youth market, which every pen company wants. It’s the same reason that both Pentel and Uniball target students on Spring Break, to introduce them to their pens now and hopefully make loyal fans of them forever.

(This is not the first time a pen company has backed a sporting event. Pilot Pen sponsors a youth badminton tournament in Singapore and, for years, also sponsored a tennis tournament called the Pilot Pen International in the US.)

According to Zebra, the CBI, broadcast on Mark Cuban’s HDNet, will reach 23 million homes. That’s a lot of brand awareness, and a lot of people on Twitter asking, as did @thesportsjudge, “…what the &^%$ is Zebra Pen?’

Meanwhile, Zebra is making other moves this year in an effort to gain wider recognition.

The Olympic Games will take place in London this summer, and so will Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years on the throne. To help promote a little British pride as part of those events, Zebra has released the limited edition Union Jack Z-Grip pens that you’ve seen in our March giveaway.

We like Zebra pens, obviously, and we know many of our readers do, too, so we’re looking forward to seeing what else they get up to this year.

(By the way, those Union Jack pens? Keep an eye on our website. Zebra is giving us a supply of them to pass on to our customers for free on all orders over £12.95.)

A while back, the good people at the excellent Quo Vadis blog wrote about a question online retailers hear all the time: What’s the deal with shipping charges?

Hopefully they won’t mind if we follow in their footsteps because our customers outside the UK often want to know the same thing.

Let me just start by saying that shipping charges are as much a point of frustration for us as they are for you. The whole idea behind Tiger Pens is to offer great pens at great prices. Anything that adds to the cost of our pens – and inconveniences our customers – is a hindrance we don’t want.

Unfortunately, shipping charges are a necessary evil.

Here’s why:

In the UK, our shipping options are more limited than they might be in the US, as private carriers are, to be frank, prohibitively expensive. If we could find a cost-effective private shipper along the lines of UPS or FedEx to deliver to our customers outside of the UK, we would, but so far, no luck in that regard.

What we’re left with is Royal Mail, which is sort of like the US Postal Service, but with more labor strikes.

Royal Mail gives us two options for shipping internationally, such as to customers in the US. One is shipping with tracking for £10 (roughly US$16). The other is shipping without tracking for slightly cheaper.

As Pete the Pen Warrior, owner and operator of Tiger Pens, says:

We do not use this as there is no proof to the customer that we have posted it, and if the items go missing, we cannot claim any compensation. As a reputable company, we do not believe that this is in either ours or the customer’s interest.

So, we ship all orders via Royal Mail, charging £7.50 in the UK and £10 for international. There is no profit for us in the shipping charges, and when you factor in handling and some additional shipping-related expenses, it actually results in a slight loss.

(We offer free shipping in the UK on orders over £10.)

So while we would love for our many fans in the US and abroad to visit our site and order just a few refills or a couple pens at a time, as our UK customers do, we know this is not feasible for most of you. As much as it pains us, the only thing we can suggest at this point is to wait until you have a large enough order to make the cost of shipping worth it…if and until there is a better solution.

We value all of you who visit the blog, like us on FB and interact with us on Twitter. Please know that we will continue searching for ways to offer you the best possible values on all your favorite pens.

And by all means, if you have any thoughts or suggestions on delivery in general or shipping charges in particular, let us know!

OK, we’re understanding people, we really are. But the Guardian has published a piece that puts forth the idea students are so unused to writing by hand that it stresses them out to do so on exams.

C’mon…seriously?

From the Guardian:

For the moment it seems that the pen and paper are here to stay, but examiners are aware of the strain written tests place upon students. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, English tutor at Oxford University, says: “Inevitably, anxiety is sometimes voiced that students are now so used to typing they can’t cope with a three-hour handwritten exam.”

Students use keyboards almost exclusively for classwork, then are required to use pens and/or pencils on written essays during exam times. Apparently, that makes their hands hurt and slows down their ability to answer questions.

Writer Rebecca Ratcliffe says:

In the run-up to my undergraduate exams, I was advised by tutors to practice speedy handwriting. Some even claimed that candidates can’t write as much these days as their counterparts did in previous years, though no data is available to prove this.

UK school officials have suggested doing away with handwritten portions of tests, while some schools have given students the options of using laptops (although few students seem to take that choice, according to the Guardian).

Yes, writer’s cramp is real. We’ve all experienced it. Usually, it’s a result of practicing the ‘death grip,’ either from bad penmanship habits or from using a cheap ballpoint that doesn’t write smoothly.

And yes, writing by hand does require a bit of a different mental process than keyboarding. Research has consistently shown the two activities engage different areas of the brain.

(Oh, and there may also be a link between good handwriting and better grades.)

But has it really gotten to the point where it’s simply too much to pick up a pen for a few hours of test-taking?

Instead of abandoning a fundamental form of communication – one that is going to persist in one form or another until the end of time – there might be some better solutions. Such as encouraging students to handwrite some work throughout the school year. Or teaching them how to write properly in the first place. Or even just using ergonomic pens.

They’re students, after all. Writing is a basic part of education.

Years ago, when I was just starting out as a newspaper reporter, I worked at a paper run by publisher Dave Lawrence. Although he was in charge of a large, busy daily metro newspaper, he often took to the time to send out handwritten notes when someone’s work particularly pleased him.

They arrived in stiff, yellow inter-office memo envelopes, closed by a string, and were known around the newsroom as ‘Dave Raves.’

I’d been at the paper for a few months, working the night desk, and was pretty sure he had no idea who I was. A couple of my stories had made the front page, but mostly I wrote minor briefs and obituaries that got tucked away in the back sections.

And then one day, I came in to work and found, in my mailbox, one of those little envelopes from the publisher’s office. It was a handwritten ‘Dave Rave’ praising an obit I’d recently written about a local cartoonist.

That note meant the world to me.

I was young, just starting out, and not too sure of myself yet, but getting a note like that from the boss was a sign that maybe I wasn’t going to suck at the job. With nothing more than a short sentence, he’d given me a shot of confidence that both pushed and carried me on into my career as a writer.

The note came to mind recently when I read an article in the Washington Post about Greg Gardner, an executive with Sunnyvale, Calif-based NetApp. When he gets a chance to work with one of the company’s 11,500 employees, he takes the time to send out a handwritten thank-you card acknowledging them.

Gardner began writing thank-you notes during his 30 years in the Army. He prefers to write them with a fountain pen he’s had since the 1980s.

“When the conditions are right — when I’m at home at my desk, I take out that lovely pen,” he said. “But that’s not the only thing I use. I’ll scribble away with a ballpoint if that’s all I’ve got.”

Along the way, Gardner has set a few ground rules for himself: Notes must offer only praise, should be handwritten, and must go out within 24 hours.

The notes are just a couple of lines, and he only writes one or two a month – usually after working with someone face-to-face – but they’re the kind of thing no one expects and everyone loves. The few minutes it takes for him to write the note, slip into an envelope and deliver it is nothing compared to the tremendous impact on morale.

According to the article, he even recently ran into a soldier who had been under his command when he was an Army officer. The soldier had kept the notes he’d received from Gardner and compiled them in a book. Obviously, they were important to him.

Who wouldn’t want a boss like that?

Last week on Twitter, @Elizabeth24407 from London reported that she’d come in to work and discovered a handwritten note and a brand-new Parker Pen from her manager, reminding her that she is a “star.”

Understandably, it made her day.

So, for you bosses out there, consider writing a little note once in a while. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just a few lines, relatively neat. It will likely mean much more than you know.

Schools across the United States are phasing out cursive handwriting, making it a hot topic of debate among educators, students and researchers.

So, CNN has responded with a brilliant series of articles about handwriting, all linked to a “cultural census” the network is taking that asks everyday people to submit samples of their own handwriting for review and public display.

(Look below to see what we’re doing to encourage our readers to participate.)

According to one of the CNN handwriting articles:

Forty out of 50 states in the United States have adopted the Common Core curriculum, which phases out cursive writing in the classroom, for their public schools. According to its mission statement, Common Core seeks to teach skills that are “robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.” In Common Core, the time formerly devoted to teaching cursive is spent on learning to type and other digital skills.

Obviously, this is not going over well with many teachers and even some parents, who grew up learning cursive and believe it to be a skill kids still need.

Besides, there has been considerable research in the last few years showing that writing by hand helps children learn to communicate effectively and is important in the development of cognitive skills.

From CNN:

“Will a simple handwritten note look like hieroglyphics to the next generation?”

So wrote second-grade teacher Anthony McGrann on his Seattle-based education blog, Seconds. The post, which argued that cursive handwriting should continue to be taught in schools, garnered more than 500 comments….

…educators like McGrann feel cursive is more than a traditional style of writing. They believe it has intrinsic value for learning and self-expression.

“For struggling writers, cursive allows them to be more fluent and thus lets their ideas flow on the page more readily … some students have more ideas in their heads than they can (print) on paper,” says McGrann. “If you integrate penmanship with other literacy activities, the formation of letters really does make a difference in the way kids retain information.”

As part of its handwriting “census,” CNN analyzed the 268 handwriting samples it had received as of Aug. 24. Fewer than 30 percent had been written in cursive. The majority were either printed or written in a combination of printing and cursive.

That’s interesting, given that a prominent American handwriting expert claimed recently that the “fastest and most legible hand writers avoid cursive.”

To collect the writing samples, CNN asked visitors to its website to write the line “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” then submit a photo of it. You can still get in on the handwriting census, if you’d like. All you have to do is register for an iReport account and upload your photo to CNN.

The samples are definitely worth browsing through, both for a look at the various handwriting styles and because some submitters also included photos of their pens, like FLJeepGuy, who used a Visconti Art Nouveau fountain pen.

Meanwhile, there are other fascinating articles to read in the handwriting series, including a piece by Michael Saba that looked at the evolution of English script, beginning with its roots as a monastic discipline.

It’s really great to see that a news outlet like CNN is not only reporting on developments in handwriting, but is also pushing the national and international conversation about it. Even greater is the fact that people are responding and actually taking the time to share their thoughts about it.

Readers, we’d love for you to join in on this CNN project.

In fact, if you do, send us a copy of the handwriting sample (preferrably with your favorite pen in the photo). We’ll number the submissions and post them on our site. Then, at the end of the month, we’ll randomly select one submission to receive a special gift.