[alias_neo]

> whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point

Writing was the bane of my life in high-school, where they insisted we use fountain pens; I had no idea left-handed fountain pens existed. Even with a more suited pen, I imagine it wouldn't resolve the issue of running your hand through the wet-ink you've just laid down.

That was some decades ago now, and I intend never to write with one again, so there's that.

EDIT: I just realised I still have my the last fountain pen I used at school (25+ years ago?) in my pen-holder and grabbed it, it's a Parker Frontier, steel with "gold" accent/clip. I still have a strange fondness for that pen despite not ever wanting to write with it again.

[Freak_NL]

I think it was one of those phases education went through. My writing isn't bad even, but that is despite some of the pedagogical approaches in vogue at the time. I remember getting a left-handed work book for practising the loops and waves in the first grade as a step before actual writing, and the approach used went so far as to demand left-handed children write with a backwards slant! Pure lunacy for kids learning to write. I never accepted that idea and just went on smudging my paper until ballpoints took over.

Now I write using a Japanese Kurutoga mechanical pencil. No pens for me if I can help it.