Guide: finding the perfect pen for your weird hand
plus: a long day of executing Master Shredder's ill-conceived plans
PROBLEM: you have recently gotten into handwriting or stationery and have discovered that you, unfortunately, have a weird hand. Your hands are frighteningly huge or comically tiny; your fingers are frustratingly stubby or disturbingly long. The pens that everyone else says are just so amazing do not work for you.
SOLUTION: this post. You just need to know what to look for in a pen, based on the specific type of weird hands you have—and we are providing this information below as a public service to the weird-handed community. You’re welcome!
CAVEAT: if you do not have weird hands, then none of what follows will make sense to you because pretty much everything is already designed for you. Wow, so great for you! Go comfortably shake some hands and give satisfying high-fives and buy a watch that just flops onto your average-sized wrist without a bunch of custom adjustments! Awesome! This, however, is not for you. LET US HAVE THIS.
Small hands, long fingers
Your hands are small and finger-forward. You like to think of them as the hands of a hand model: slender, elegant, refined. Everyone else thinks you look like an alien and secretly hopes you will not touch them with your weird spindly fingers.
Good news: these are the best kind of hands. Unrelated: these are the kind of hands I have.
If this also describes you, you will want to look for shorter, fatter pens. Longer pens will stick out of your hand too much and you’ll need to grip them too hard to keep them in balance; skinnier pens will require you to curl your weird long fingers more than is comfortable. You will do best with a short, fat pen that lets your hand and fingers relax; you will almost never post the cap on the back of a pen when writing.
Good pens for you include the Krusac Dragonslayer, the Pineider Tempi Moderni, and the Conklin All-American/1898, all unposted. You can also try the Lepine Attila pocket pen. If you are unsure if a pen is right for you, see if anyone has described it as “chonky” in a review and you’ll be good.
Big hands, long fingers
You are from Norway, Finland, or some other northern nation where everyone is tall and big-framed because all the small people were killed off by mountain trolls. Your large hands and long fingers ensure you are ready to wield Jammertha, your village’s legendary warhammer, if another Tröllenhappüng occurs during your lifetime.
You need a pen that is both long and fat; anything else is going to require a death grip to hold in position. Thankfully, pen makers understand how critical you are to troll defense, so you have a lot of options.
You can use any pen that the small hands/long fingers group can use (above), as long as you can post the cap on the end (i.e., not the Dragonslayer). You can also use oversized pens like the Monteverde Giant Sequoia, pretty much anything made by Hinze pens, and—for pocket pens—the Tom’s Studio pocket fountain pen. Postable, oversized BENU pens like the Tattoo and Euphoria will also work.
Small hands, short fingers
You have small hands with small fingers. You have escaped the doll factory where you were illegally employed to sew in doll hair, as your small, well-proportioned hands made you suited for the task. You now find yourself in a strange and hostile world, uncertain how you escaped a grimy factory in Victorian London and ended up reading a pen blog in the year 2024. Did that old man who promised you freedom have anything to do with it—and if so, at what cost?
One thing is for sure: you will need a short, skinny pen to draw a map that you hope will help you get home in time to deliver porridge to mother. Avoid anything marketed as “oversized,” “large,” or “for adults,” as the extra pen length and girth will end up a constant source of frustration.
Pocket pens will be a safe bet for you, and you’re fortunate in that there are a lot to choose from: the Kaweco Sport, Kaweco Lilliput, and Lepine Indigo are good jumping-off points. Smaller Japanese pens also work, with the Fonte Biiro being an especially tiny and affordable entry point.
Big hands, short fingers
Your hands are basically bricks with little cocktail wieners attached. Your friends would make fun of you if they were not constantly terrified that you would smash them into the ground. You have recently taken up writing as a way to decompress after a long day of executing Master Shredder’s ill-conceived plans and putting up with Rocksteady’s idiotic bumbling, but most pens simply don’t work for you.
You need a pen that is long but skinny. Although this is a fairly challenging niche, you have done battle with a teenager wielding two samurai swords approximately ten thousand times and never once suffered a serious injury, so you bring a can-do spirit to the task.
And good news: there are pens like this! The Retro51 Tornado, Diplomat Traveler, and Caran D’Ache 849, all posted, are good bets for something long but slender and come in a variety of colors. You can also try a Jinhao Shark if you need something shark-shaped.
This is the best blog I have ever read. As a person with small hands and long fingers, I wish I had read it before I bought all the pens in the second group. At least now I know why they don’t work. This is a nice way of saying “at least now I have a weird hand diagnosis”.
For long, skinny pens, I mourn the loss of the late, lamented Rotring Art Pen