There are a lot of terms thrown around for fountain pen nibs, and while some of them are fairly straightforward, some may make very little sense if you’re new to this stuff. But that’s ok, we’re here to help. We’ll also cover some of the things that might not be obvious about the terms that sound straightforward.
What Is a Nib?
You’re probably thinking “Isn’t that obvious?” Well, yeah, it is a bit. The metal bit of a fountain pen, the bit you write with. Under the nib is the feed, usually plastic. And those both poke out from the section, the bit you grip when writing.
It’s worth mentioning, though, that the very tip of the nib, in most cases, is a separate tip, made from a very hard metal alloy. If you’ve seen the term ‘iridium tip’, that’s what it refers to. Technically, it’s not usually made from iridium, but an alloy of very hard metals that won’t wear down with use. Gold and steel, the materials normally used for nibs, would wear away over years of use.
Historically
If you go back far enough, the terminology was quite different. Before there were fountain pens, with ink inside, people used dip pens, where a dip nib was held in the end of a holder, and dipped into the ink to write. These are still in use now, with a lot of artists still loving them for how quickly you can change ink and nibs for different effects.
But back when those were the main type of pen in use, the term for the nib holder was ‘pen holder’. And yes, that means the thing we’d now call a nib was called a ‘pen’. The term ‘nib’ did exist, but it referred to the very tip of what we’d now call the nib. Somehow the terminology just kind of slipped back up the pen - the holder became the pen, the pen became the nib.
Must have been very confusing as it was changing, with different meanings for the same words, depending on how old and how stubborn people were.
Nib Materials
We cover this in more detail over here, but the very short version is that there’s probably less practical difference between gold and steel nibs than you might think. If you want a pen with a gold nib, there’s no reason not to, but steel is a perfectly good material for nibs.
Normal Nibs
Some fountain pens only have one choice of nib, but most will offer at least the basics - fine, medium and broad. And while they’ll generally be fairly similar between brands, there’s no set definition of want ‘medium’ actually means. So a medium nib from one brand could be a bit wider or narrower than a medium nib from another.
In fact, even within the same model of pen, there can be a bit of variation between individual nibs. But broadly speaking (see what we did there?) Japanese and other Asian nibs will tend to be finer than Western nibs.
Beyond those sizes, some pens will also offer extra-fine, and/or extra-broad nibs. Again, there’s no set meaning, but they’ll be just more fine or more broad. Oh, and Platinum are a little odd, and call their extra-broad nibs ‘C’ nibs - one step beyond B, it almost makes sense!
Stubs and Italics
Here’s where the practical tends to deviate somewhat from the theory. In theory, there are:
- Italic Nibs - straight-cut, wide and thin. Write broad strokes up and down, but fine from side to side. The crisp edges make them likely to dig into the paper if you’re not careful with them.
- Cursive Italic Nibs - very similar, but a little rounded at the edges, to make them more forgiving to use.
- Stub Nibs - significantly more rounded off, so they can be used for day-to-day writing. They still need a bit more attention than you might be used to with a standard nib, but they’re intended for normal writing. And they’re not usually very broad by italic nib standards.
The problem is that most manufacturers have rounded off the edges a bit on their italic nibs, so they’re easier to use. And as stub nibs became popular, some started calling their nibs ‘stub’ when they would probably be more accurately described as cursive italic.
But the terms never had very specific meanings, anyway - there’s no set level of curved corners to count as cursive.
Oh, and just for historical interest - ‘stub’ hasn’t always meant a more usable italic. It used to be the term used for any nib that’s sorter than ‘normal’ for the time. It used to just mean ’stubby’. But that never had a very set meaning either, and we haven’t seen the term used that way in recent years at all. So you can safely ignore it, we just thought it was interesting.
Oblique Nibs
We won’t talk about these much, as they’re rare to find outside specialist calligraphy stuff these days, but the term has sometimes been confused with ‘italic’, so we’ll just clear that up. An oblique nib is cut to meet the paper at an angle. They’re most clearly referred to as ‘left foot’ or ‘right foot’ oblique, so you know what shape they are, but they’re also sometimes just referred to as ‘left’ or ‘right’, and then you have to work out what that means! Or sometimes, just one option for ‘oblique’, and you have to guess or work it out from photos.
Oblique nibs are often also italic, but don’t have to be. They make much more sense on italic nibs, though, as they can help to change the direction you get the broad strokes in.
Flexibility
Some nibs flex a bit when you use a bit more pressure, which usually spreads the tines (the sides of the nib, on each side of the slit), making a broader line. But most modern nibs aren’t made to flex much, if at all.
Long ago, flexible nibs were quite normal. People were used to them. But a couple of things happened. The ballpoint pen came along, and, especially with early ballpoints, needed a bit of pressure to write. So people got used to pressing much harder when they wrote - which would be quite damaging to flexible nibs.
Also, carbon paper became popular, for making copies of things - forms that would be duplicated as you filled them in, or just making a copy of a letter to go on file. And carbon paper needed pressure, so it became a selling point for fountain pens to have nibs firm enough to handle such use.
And at that point, even people who used fountain pens were often used to writing with firm nibs, and using more pressure, so flexible nibs became less appealing, as they were more likely to be damaged in use.
Which is all a long way of saying that very few nibs now have much flex to them, and even nibs that are specifically sold as ‘flex’ or ‘soft’, usually aren’t as soft as nibs used to be.
Specialist Stuff
That’s already more nib types than most people will ever use, but there are more! Lots of variations of nibs have been made over the years, though most are quite rare or even non-existent on modern pens.
- Music Nibs are a variation on italic and stub nibs, made for writing musical notation. They often have three tines, with two slits, for more ink flow - presumably people writing music want to do so fast.
- Architect nibs are rarely seen now, but are ground to give a wider line side-to-side, for the unusual style of text associated with architectural drawings. Then need a lot of care to keep the pen at just the right angle, giving a bit more of a learning curve than most people want in a pen!
- Sailor Zoom nibs are perhaps some of the most interesting - they’re shaped such that they’ll write a different line width depending on the angle you hold the pen - the more upright you hold it, the finer the line. Even at their finest, though, they are quite broad, and at a normal writing angle for most people, they’re very broad - great fun, but maybe a bit broader than most people would use day-to-day.
- Posting Nibs are very fine nibs, but the term isn’t often used now. They’re also known as accounting nibs, as their main purpose was for making very tiny notes in accounts listings. They also became popular in Japan, for business mail on small postcards that were cheaper to send.
- Waverly nibs are mainly a historic thing now, but still very occasionally made - the tip of the nib curves upward, to meet the paper a bit more horizontally. The idea was to make the pen write more smoothly when held a bit too upright, as people started using ballpoints and got in the habit of holding their pens more vertically.
Brands with Special Nibs
Some brands make more nib choices available than others, so let’s have a quick look at some brands you might want to check out.
- Esterbrook still keeps up the tradition of unusual speciality nibs, with things like the Custom Gena ‘journaler’ nib. These are usually made by one person, hand-grinding them one at a time, so stock can be very limited.
- Sailor has the Zoom nib mentioned above, and music nibs, on some of their pens.
- Pilot have some special nibs, but only on some of their high-end pens. They have a Posting nib, which is an unusual design, with a little downward curve towards the tip, so it meets the paper more upright. They also have the Falcon, with a soft nib, made to flex with pressure for line variation.
- Platinum have music nibs with two slits, available on some of their #3776 pens. And some have the option of SF and/or SM nibs - Soft Fine and Soft Medium - nibs with a bit of flex to them.
- Lamy’s interchangeable nibs are very handy if you change your mind about the nib size you want, or if your nib gets damaged. They also have three sizes of italic nibs available, so you can use italic nibs on most of their pens.