The standard fountain pen typically comes with a nib that ranges from extra fine to broad, and the tip of the nib is round. The round tip means it lays down a uniform line on the paper. Many fountain pen brands also offers a few alternative nibs that aren’t round at the tip, for instance different types of italic nibs. An italic nib gives you more line width variation between vertical and horizontal lines.
Ideally, a fountain pen nib should almost float over the paper, and not require the user to press down. But to most people this style of writing has become challenging, because they are used to writing with ball point pens which require quite a lot of pressure. Besides — out of the box — many fountain pens won’t write like that, without applying a little pressure, and so in order to get them to perform the way one ought to expect a fountain pen to perform, most pens will do well with some nib adjustment. These adjustments require skill and finesse, so thankfully there are specialists who can do it for you. And in addition to the general nib tuning, these experts can also grind, for instance, a round pen nib into a different shape.
I did this recently: I had a new pen customized into a so-called stub. A stub is similar to an italic nib, but the corners of the stub nib are slightly rounded off, making writing more effortless than with an italic nib.
This means I can get some variation in line, but without having to slow down my writing much. Time is, after all, of the essence — we live in the age of locomotives.
