I used both fountain pens and pencils when I was in school and I had similar results, regardless of the tool. Though my writing wasn't exactly beautiful, but it was pretty readable.

Regarding the ball-point pen, when I switched to it, I had to write fast, so the writing might have deteriorated from both the speed and the tool.

A fountain pen is generally more expressive, but it takes a lot of time to control and you can't rush it.

There's something about a fountain pen. I have a few, and without fail I write more neatly, and make fewer mistakes, than when using pencil or ball-point. I think it's that they demand slightly more concentration on mechanics to make them work, and that's enough to make a big difference in the writing quality.

Eh… I have one I use daily (a Pilot/Namiki retractable nib) and it certainly hasn't made my handwriting any better. It is nicer than a regular pen though.

That's simple. Dip and fountain pens allow you to create lines of different thickness, which can result in interesting calligraphy. It's simply impossible with ball pens which produce constant thickness lines.

I was required to use a fountain pen at school (late 80s UK). Needless to say as a left handed person my enforced writing style one word, blot, one word, blot was anything but fluid.

At least you weren't forced to write with your right hand. I have been told that was fairly common a generation further back (At least, my dad claims so).

I have been lucky, not being punished for writing with my left hand. My mother was forced to write with her right hand. But even in the 1980s pupils in Germany were forced to write with the right (in both meanings) hand.

We now know a lot more, about what this does to a child's brain, but then, teachers just believed to be right.

I knew a left-handed math prof who had had that treatment growing up in Holland. But he'd developed a party trick.

One day he told us about this. And said that the result was that he could write with both hands. Different things. He demonstrated. Wrote with both hands at once, different things, on 2 neighboring boards. Kept on writing. Got to the bottom of the boards. Then turned around, began lecturing from the first board, reached the bottom, and continued the lecture from the second. He had laid out the boards perfectly to do this.

It was a very impressive party trick.

We had a slightly less impressive professor, who erased with the right and wrote with the left. Also at the same time.

It doesn't do anything to a child's brain, it's just gratuitously cruel. That is reason enough. But many people the world over learn to eat or whatever with a certain hand and it does not hurt their brain.

I think even if your handwriting is crap a fountain pen just looks better, or at least more auspicious. Horrible for lefties of course, but very nice to use if you're right-handed.

If you're left-handed, handwriting proceeds best by mirroring what the right hand would do (ie. write 'backwards'). It's far more natural. Alright, so others will need a mirror to read it - but that ought to be society's problem, not yours! ("Equal rights for the Sinisterous!")

In a gradual shift toward ambidexterity, I've found that questioning society's insistence on 'right-ness' can be enlightening...

Presumably script that proceeds right to left (and even upwards) was originated by left handed scribes

edit spellchecker : left handed scribes became left handed scones. The history of heavy baked goods in the development of human civilisation has been scandalously neglected by a blinkered academic community.

I remember I read somewhere about the fact that right-to-left script was preferred when carving script on stone. as right hand people supposedly prefer to hold the hammer on their right hand.

I'm not sure if that's really the cause. Furthermore in many ancient scripts the direction was quite unimportant, in some cases even reverting in each line (Boustrophedon).

Interesting take on direction of writing: http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/292987.html

I don't get it. Why is it harder for lefties? Aren't the pens themselves ambidextrous?

Writing left-handed in a left-to-right script requires the hand to move over the ink that was just applied. This invariably means smudges. Writing right-handed (LTR) the ink has time to dry before the hand moves over it for the next line of prose.

Plus the ink from a fountain pen stays "sumdgier" longer than modern pens.