Archive for the 'Handwriting' Category

Waterproof Kiwa-Guro Ink

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on June 9, 2008
in Handwriting
. 0 Comments

This ink is waterproof though it may not seem so at first glance.

This ink will smudge when it first encounters water, but after the surface ink that did no fully bind with the paper washes away, you are left with very black, permanent writing. How much surface ink exists seems to depend on the paper. In Molskine notebooks it smudges a lot, but unlike the Aurora and Jentle inks, the writing remains legible. It smudges less in my police notebooks.

Kiwa-Guro also makes my extra-fine nibs glide across the page as nicely as the silky Aurora ink. This ink will be another ink I will use for a decade or more.

Waterproof Fountain Pen Ink

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 27, 2008
in Handwriting
. 1 Comment

Handwriting with a good fountain pen is my favorite form of written communication. At its best, this type of communication is both tactile and intellectual. It is more involved and personal than typing my thoughts into a computer.

Moleskine Paper & Fountain Pen Ink

A large Moleskine notebook is always at hand and so too is a Lamy 2000 fountain pen, either an extra-fine nib or the stout, reliable, medium nib. Current Moleskine notebooks are renown for paper that dislikes some fountain pen inks and the horrid recycled paper in office pads defies description. For over a decade, I relied on the silky smooth Aurora ink as it makes very fine nibs glide across the page and it doesn’t bleed through or feather on this paper. Unfortunately, the slightest dampness and Aurora ink becomes an unreadable mess.

Sailor Ink

I next discovered Sailor Jentle ink. The yellow is wonderful, but hard to read; the red-brown is a superb colour; and the black is a rich, true black. Alas, these inks are not much better than Aurora when confronted with a small drop of moisture from the bottom of a cold beer glass.

Lamy & Mont Blanc Blue-black Iron Gall Ink

Then I discovered Lamy’s blue-black iron-gall ink. It makes the extra-fine nib scratchy and unpleasant to write with, but in the medium nib it works wonderfully. It goes onto the paper as a very pale blue and darkens on contact with the air. Its colour is not uniform, slow writing is darker as there is more ink on the page. Best of all, it is waterproof. This type of ink is sometimes called registrar’s ink. It also comes in two very convenient bottles from Lamy and Mont Blanc. I think I found an ink to use for the next decade or more.

Handwriting & Knowledge Work

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 13, 2008
in Handwriting
. 0 Comments

There is a large communication component to information and knowledge work. Proper penmanship is part of that component.

Taking time to properly document your research and analysis often entails handwritten notes. These notes are in turn used to check the correctness of the finished report. That means your notes must be complete and legible.

Good penmanship is the product of practice and concentration. It is also the product of the proper tools. A proper pen for the size of the writing and for the speed of the writing. Paper that is smooth enough for the selected writing implement. Ink that does not bleed through or feather on the page.

Your note-taking must also allow easy photocopying and scanning. I often get faxed or photocopied notes that are illegible. Correcting this is also part of penmanship in the modern age.

I often hear people complain that their handwriting is poor because they have to write fast. This is a poor excuse. If you need to write fast, then learn a simple shorthand system like Quickhand.

Cheque Washing and Pens

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on March 2, 2008
in Forgery, Fraud, Handwriting and Security
. 0 Comments

Handwritten documents are important to any Investigator or Researcher as they are either creating them, or reading them. Archives throughout the country are full of original handwritten documents of value to researchers.

The age of the ubiquitous ballpoint pen began in the 40’s and this has caused some problems for archivists as so many companies strove to create inexpensive ballpoint pens. The problem has become one of education. The pen may write, but the ink may fade over time, or be vulnerable to water and other solvents. UV light and poor quality paper also do a fine job of obliterating cheap ink from poor quality ballpoint pens. The forgers art of cheque-washing in the following examples illustrate what can happen to documents that encounter solvents. Continue reading ‘Cheque Washing and Pens’

The Job’s Not Done Until The Paperwork Is Finished

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on November 24, 2007
in Handwriting, Methods, Notebooks, Private Investigator and Report Writing
. 0 Comments

I once reviewed of an organization’s investigation practices and found a wide range of competence and quality in the investigations, the reporting, and record keeping.

The Investigator’s notes must truly reflect what he did. It is remarkable how quickly the mind loses its ability to recall the details of events. The realisation that unrecorded events become forgotten or distorted with the passage of time was missing in the notes of most of the investigations I examined. The final report often described events that were not in the file notes. From this practice, questions arise about the nature of the sources used and when facts were uncovered.

It is prudent practice to ensure that investigation notes do not contain anything unrelated to the investigation. Nor is it wise to record derogatory data without recording its source. To do otherwise, risks a loss of objectivity that discredits investigation and the Investigator. However, I frequently found the subject referred to by pejorative terms that could not be attributed to any source. Also found in the file notes were grocery lists, telephone numbers of unrelated parties, the office lunch take-out order, and the telephone numbers of massage parlours and prostitutes entirely unrelated to the investigation.

One Investigator stood-out from the rest. When questioned about his practices, he admitted to pruning the deadwood from his files before the release of the final report. He also used 32 page notebooks for all his file notes – you know the type, the ones your kids use at school. This conveniently kept all his notes in an organized fashion. I checked Staples and found a package containing four of these for $0.77. I now use this excellent low-cost solution to “note pollution”.

This “pruning the deadwood” should extend to the electronic files. In the meta data of a final report, I found that a lawyer (at the organization’s law firm) had edited what became an investigation report. The file notes did not support the lawyer’s changes to the report, nor was the lawyer on the distribution list for the report.

In some environments, it is standard practice to use normal word processing applications to produce and then print a document, which is then scanned into PDF to avoid any embarrassing problems with meta data. Once printed and scanned, the original word processing file is deleted and overwritten.

Remember, the job’s not done until the paperwork is finished.

Paper Versus Binding & Ink Versus Paper

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on November 5, 2007
in Communication, Handwriting, Notebooks and Report Writing
. 1 Comment


I read an article by Craig Courtice in the National Post entitled The Cult of the Moleskine and it got me a thinkin’. What makes a good notebook? Certainly not stories about famous people using it. A notebook is paper, binding, and a cover. Continue reading ‘Paper Versus Binding & Ink Versus Paper’

How to Take Notes like Thomas Edison

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on October 19, 2007
in Handwriting, Intellectual Property Rights, Methods, Notebooks and Report Writing
. 0 Comments

Thomas Edison was one of the world’s greatest note-takers. He considered his note-taking and filing system as a vital part of all his endeavours. This often lead to his victory in legal disputes and it was also the reservoir for what seemed like an amazing memory.

Famous inventor Thomas Edison is probably the most experienced note-taker in the world. His diary which is still maintained as an important part of the United States historical record contains five million (5,000,000) pages.

Edison certainly subscribed to the philosophy that if life is worth living, it is worth writing about.

Inexpensive Pens With Good Ink

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on August 1, 2007
in Fraud, Handwriting and Report Writing
. 2 Comments

Normally I don’t use inexpensive pens, but lately I have found three inexpensive pens I now use for work and when I am travelling due to the good ink they contain. They are the Pilot G-2, Pilot G-TEC-C4, and now the uni-ball 207.

My current favorite, the uni-ball 207, uses an ink that contains color pigments which are absorbed into the paper fibers. The ink is in effect trapped on the paper fibres and can’t be washed off, as some forgers do to alter cheques. Refills are available. Uni-ball 207 is sold worldwide in stationery and office supply stores and other outlets. Mike Shea did some interesting tests of the ink in the uni-ball 207 and the G-2 and three other inks. The G-2 survived water but not soap and bleach. The uni-ball ink survived all the tests.

The Pilot G-Tec-C4 or the G-TEC-C writes with a very fine line. I use it for corrections and margin notes. They are so thin they write like mechanical pencils. The G-TEC-C seems to have a more durable ink, but it is hard to find in North America.

If your handwritten records have to survive intact for a long time, then you have to carefully consider the ink used to produce them. It seems I’ll be using the uni-ball 207 a lot more from now on.

Shorthand for the Investigator

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on May 7, 2007
in Communication, Handwriting, Methods, Private Investigator, Report Writing and Shorthand
. 0 Comments

Most people can write 35 words per minute. However, most students after 1 year of instruction can not write 60 words per minute (wpm) using Gregg or Pitman shorthand. After two years of instruction, half will not reach 80 wpm. Now you know why shorthand was the most frequently failed course and is no longer taught in High School. It is not a matter of shorthand being obsolete, especially for the Investigator or Reporter. It relates to the basic failure of these systems to be easily taught, and more importantly, retained.

A usable system based on the roman alphabet, rather than an obscure and entirely different alphabet, shortens the learning curve. It also lets the student instantly write short forms for the 10 most common English words, which make-up about one quarter of all the words we use. In business correspondence, we normally use only 422 words according to some experts.

An alphabetic system that uses very few symbols, and easily understood rules, should get most people to 80 wpm if it concentrates on the most common words. Such a system may be easily transcribed years later as it will follow certain rules and it uses our normal alphabet. Alphabetic shorthand systems fall back on longhand to define an abbreviation or where clarity is important. These two considerations are critical to any type of Investigator. Investigation notes and notebooks must be accurate, complete, legible, and usable years after the investigation has been completed. The system must also be adaptable to the type of notebooks normally used to record the investigation’s progress. Gregg, Pitman and even Teeline shorthand are far less adaptable to the small notebooks used by Investigators.

Don’t resist learning to write this type of shorthand. Unlike traditional symbol-based shorthand, you won’t fail the course. Failure here only means you will improve your note-taking speed by only two times instead of three. This system won’t make you a court reporter or Hansard recorder, but it will make you a better Investigator.

There are a few shorthand systems like this, but the easiest to use and the least expensive to learn (in time and money) is the Quickhand system. At $25.50 from Wiley in Canada or at Amazon on our Book Page.

Quickhand A Self-Teaching Guide
ISBN: 9780471328872
Author: Grossman, Jeremy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, New York
Author: Grossman, Jeremy
Publication Date: February 1976
Binding: Paperback
Illustrations: Yes
Pages: 152
Dimensions: 9.96×6.74x.38 in. .61 lbs.

Notebooks

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on April 22, 2007
in Handwriting, Methods, Private Investigator and Report Writing
. 1 Comment


As much as I enjoy new technology, like wireless networks and Palm Pilots, I often find the solutions our forebearers devised less prone to failure. The lowly notebook and pen fall into this category.

Since the beginning of my professional life, I have carried on a relationship with one type of notebook or another. The lowly notebook has never failed me. I have never lost a notebook or had it stolen. All the important stuff that I must recall goes into a notebook. I usually have several on the go at once — some for specific topics, some for their size and others because of their covers.

Using all these notebooks has evolved into a simple system. Important lists of phone numbers and indexes go on the first few pages. I usually reserve the first four pages for this purpose. All my rough, scribbled notes start on the last page and progress toward the beginning of the book. The legible complete notes start after the list and index pages and finish when they meet the scribbled notes. I write the start and finish dates on the cover along with a description of anything of lasting importance contained in the notebook.

To keep my place in the small notebooks I use a rubber band. I also put two rubber bands over the back cover of the hard covered notebooks to hold extra papers and a few 3″ x 5″ index cards. A small glue stick is always handy to stick business cards, photos, and other important things to the notebook pages to prevent loss.

Writing in small notebooks requires a different script than normally taught in school. This I call police officer italic. I form each letter individually; it is not quite printing and not quite cursive like I was taught in grade school. If I write in any other way, it will not be legible when read months later.

In this computer-obsessed age, a pen and notebook are more portable, don’t require batteries or a power outlet, cost next to nothing, start immediately and don’t crash. Finally, a notebook doesn’t seem out of place on the restaurant table like a notebook computer or even my Palm Pilot with its fold out keyboard.

Handwriting Repair

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on November 17, 2006
in Handwriting
. 1 Comment

Handwriting is an important but severely neglected skill; yet we encounter the problems of lost productivity resulting from poor writing almost daily. However, we seem unable to address this problem effectively at any level of our society. This is not a new problem. Solutions do exist. We need to adopt the simple methods used in the renaissance to correct our handwriting in the computer age.

If you don’t think this is a problem consider this: Roman Vasquez of Monahans Texas who died a few years ago when his doctor prescribed Isordil, a heart drug, but the pharmasist read it as Plendil. The Vasquez family won a $450,000 judgement.

According to the Institute of Medicine, prescription, errors kill 7000 Americans every year. Continue reading ‘Handwriting Repair’

School brings back pens so pupils get write stuff

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on November 16, 2006
in Handwriting
. 0 Comments

A PRIVATE school is insisting pupils use fountain pens, in an attempt to save the dying art of handwriting.Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville junior school in Edinburgh believes longhand is on the brink of extinction, thanks to text messaging and computers.