If you're waiting for your flight -- especially if you're facing a delay -- you aren't going anywhere. You probably don't want to unpack your laptop computer -- you'll need the battery for the flight. You don't want to read -- you'll need your book for the flight. Take out your notebook and draw a quick sketch of the people around you, and of the place.

Being able to sketch a place quickly is another way of making a note about it. It's a nice skill to have -- not least because it leads you to think about what you're seeing, and how it differs from what you see every day. Remember: your notes are for you: it doesn't matter if they are beautiful or well drawn, any more than your penmanship matters. If you can read your notes, that's what matters. Ten years from now, those horrible sketches you make today will look a lot nicer!

Crossroads of the World

The big international crossroads -- Heathrow in London, Changi in Singapore -- give you a chance to see people from the far corners of the world, sitting and waiting (like you) for their flights. But small, regional airports offer equally good sketching: you see a lot more cowboys and mining engineers in College Station, Texas, than you're likely to see back home in Boston.

People tend to stay put

You can't wander around, because your flight might leave. Neither can your fellow passengers. Everyone is tired. Everyone is stuck. This is great for sketching, because you've got time to draw.

All sorts of people

Even if you attend figure drawing classes, you're likely to draw lots of students and teachers. Airports give you a chance to see babies and toddlers, business travelers, grandparents -- just about everybody. It's a great cross-section of the moment. (Look at airports and train stations in old photographs and old movies; they capture the era as well as anything. The airport in Casablanca is 1941 as much as The Terminal is 2004. )

They won't mind

People seldom notice you if you sketch in airports. (In art museums, everyone comes and checks your work and judges it against the masters. In airports, they leave you alone.) Even if people notice that you're sketching them, they seldom mind. If they do, they can simply change seats -- no hassle for them, no embarrassment for you. This is safer, in fact, than café sketching; there's always a chance that people meeting in a café are meeting there because their friends or spouses won't know, but nobody sneaks off to the airport.

If you’re looking for a new way to interact with paper, consider a fountain pen. Fountain pens are a joy to write with.

This is a basic primer on finding the right fountain pen for you. Many resources on fountain pens are available.

Taking a Test

Because the perfect pen for me could be completely wrong for you, the key to finding the right fountain pen is finding a good pen shop. Any good pen shop will let you try a fountain pen before you commit to buying it. This is the critical phase. You simply cannot know the right pen for you without writing with it. Here in Boston, the place to go is the Bromfield Pen Shop,in DC it's Fahrneys. Fahrneys has a brisk catalog business which is great for getting refills, inks, pads, and the like. Both are also great places to take your pens for a tune-up, which is useful if you've got an old one with ancient ink in a drawer. In addition to suggesting pens for you, they will also show you how to fill the pen, how to use converters, and suggest the right ink for you.

Good pen shops sell antique or used pens. These are wonderful for collectors and can provide an authentic “retro” experience, but remember that as you write with a decent fountain pen, especially one with a somewhat softer nib , the nib molds itself to the way you write. This is why you should never lend your fountain pen to someone else. The nib is the key to your connection with the pen and you don’t want anyone else mucking about with that.

The Nib

The nib is the essence of any fountain pen. It is the reason you buy a fountain pen. Nothing writes like it. When it's right — the right pen, writing on the right paper with the right ink - it just goes. You lose consciousness of the thing you are writing with. The key is finding the right nib for you, whether flexible or stiff, wide or narrow, straight or chiseled.

Nibs are typically steel, gold, rhodium, or some combination. While the material matters, it doesn’t matter as much as you might think. I have used steel pens that write beautifully (e.g. Rotring 700). The key is how the nib is shaped and how it performs in your hand. This is, again, why you need to take a test-write.

Some nibs are quite stiff, like many from Waterman. Some are really flexible, such as Omas' OGIVA and the Namiki Falcon. Some are, of course, in-between. If you write with a heavy-hand, a flexible nib's likely not for you. If you love to see the "thicks and thins" of your letters you'll definitely want to look for a more flexible pen.

Don’t try and change your writing to the pen. Write naturally when you test-write and you’ll stand a better chance of finding the right pen for you. It’s not you; it’s the pen. Just because it’s a Mont Blanc and costs a week’s wages doesn’t mean its better than that $100 Parker. If the Parker feels better, it is better.

There's the question of nib size: extra-fine, fine, medium, bold. The right size is determined by the size of your handwriting. If you write small, look for a finer point; a wider nib will make your letters illegible. Namiki's fine points - because they are tuned for kanji letters - are among the clearest around. But a fine nib may feel "scratchy" if you have a light touch or if the angle at which you hold the pen is less than straight-on.

Then there's nib shape. There are italic nibs, chisel-point nibs, and oblique nibs. They’re great for calligraphy and the oblique ones are often favored by lefties. Your pen dealer can show you options.

The Barrel

After the nib, the size and the weight of the pen is important. The ball point made today's slender pens possible, but many people actually prefer the heftier feel of traditional fountain pens.

Thickness and weight don't have to go together. For example, if you have big hands or long fingers, you'll probably prefer a thick pen. Want a light pen, too? No problem: there are dozens of pens made with celluloid barrels - beautiful to look at and surprisingly light. Want big and heavy? No problem: there are metal barreled pens that are either steel or brass. Really thin? No problem. Custom choice is the big advantage of fountain pens. It's what you pay for.

The Ink

Of course, another reason you buy a fountain pen is because you get to choose your ink. Bromfield carries hundreds of inks and has a binder showing how each of the inks they carry looks on paper. You can then find just the right blue or the sepia that has just the right look.

Cost

Good fountain pens are pricey, but only to a point. You can buy very good pens for less than a hundred bucks.

You can spend much more, but beyond about $250, performance really does not increase. Cheap ones often write as well as the really expensive ones. A $3000 limited-edition may look exquisite, but the pen won't write any better than a $200 pen.

Myself, I like a smooth nib, somewhat flexible, generally with fine points. My pen of choice is a Pelikan 400 (Fahrney's). I have a fine and an extra-fine. These are my everyday pens, with different inks in different colored pens so I know when I’ve got the extra-fine with the brown ink or the fine with the blue ink.

Drawbacks

You have to refill them a bit more often than with ballpoints or rollerballs, but that's not a big deal. Some take cartridges, so it’s just a matter of swapping one out. Otherwise you’ll need your ink bottle at hand and it's good to carry a spare if you're going to be away from your ink for a while. A fountain pen is also not a good mix with thin paper (e.g. Moleskine) because it lays a heavy line and will bleed. But even the best paper is relatively cheap, so you can find the kind you like without too much trouble. If you’ve got a notebook you love and are looking for a pen to match, by all means bring it to the pen shop. They’ll have you write on their pads which are designed to show off their pens, but they also won’t mind in the least if you break out your own notebook to see how the ink goes.

I don’t tend to travel with fountain pens, because I use a Moleskine for my travel journal and prefer not to take really nice pens where I might lose them. People say fountain pens leak on airplanes. This may be urban myth. If you fill it before you fly and are careful opening it the first time after pressurization you should be okay. But it's also good to have some AMODEX on hand (Bromfield). Accidents happen.

There's nothing like writing with a fountain pen. My best advice is test drive, test drive, test drive. It's the only way to find the pen for you.

As a result, readers habitually copied out passages they wished to remember in a personal journal or commonplace book. The custom had the advantage of calling the reader's attention into intimate contact with those passages that appealed to them most intensely. By copying passages longhand, the reader gains time to reflect both on the meaning and the construction of their favorite works.

And, having copied the passages, you'll always have your copy. Though photocopiers and scanners mean we can easily make exact copies at trifling cost, copying striking passages can remain a valuable exercise and a rewarding activity. A collection of selected passages makes a wonderful intellectual portrait. Shared with friends and colleagues, it also helps focus discussion and provides much food for thought: a manager's commonplace book, placed online, can provide a superb tool for guiding organizational culture and strategy without imposing onerous and easily-resented training lectures or consultant interviews.

Ideally, we want to write things down directly in our trusted system, which will usually be stored in a computer. But because the computer isn't always available, we need a second place to write. And that means we should always have a pen.

A surprising number of very technical people have recently re-embraced the fountain pen for everyday writing. They're drawn to fountain pens not from nostalgia or from a desire for expensive jewelry, but because they enjoy the way the pen feels in their hand -- or the way their writing looks on the page.

When I asked about fountain pens on my weblog, I received a remarkable outpouring of passionate mail. Here, lightly edited, are some selections.

Ryan Holcomb

I just started using a fountain recently. The reason I like it?

Engagement.

To write properly with a fountain pen takes mindfulness. You must be completely connected with the process of writing as you transfer thought to paper.

And the results reflect that mindfulness. Your state of being is captured on paper through the varying line width and serifs that a fountain pen leaves. There is also a visceral connection with the paper as each pen each has its characteristic friction , unlike the generic press and roll of a ball-point or the soft quiet slide of a felt tip.

Using a fountain pen isn't the fastest writing tool but I have found it to be one of the more engaging writing tools. Like Tinderbox, fountain pens engage you in the process enriching in their feedback.

Will Emerson

To any list of fountain pen lovers, you must add Natalie Goldberg who wrote Writing Down the Bones in 1986 and advised using fountain pens for the fact that they have low friction/ great flow and help "to keep the hand moving." I believe she did a lot to encourage people in America to write--as a spiritual practice, as self-expression, as an antidote to television, as anything as long as you 'Keep the hand moving." As such, I think she paved the way for the idea of the blog and the value of citizen writers.

Alwin Hawkins

Do try the Waterman Phileas pens. They are easy to find for less than $30, a lot of the chain office stores carry them, they come with a converter to let you use bottled ink, and have a good "feel" and ink delivery for such an inexpensive pen.

The Rotring 600 that I have is a quality pen. As a writing instrument it took a little "breaking in" to get used to my writing style, but then laid down a line with good ink flow as long as I "brushed" the ink on - note that it takes a while to adjust your writing style in transitioning from ball point to fountain pen.

The Lamy Safari has a lot of fans - it's a decent student's pen, and half the price of the Waterman. I prefer the Waterman, but I'd find a pen shop to try stroking some ink onto a page to see which one you like.

Charles Starrett

Another recommendation: Namiki Vanishing Point. The "retracting nib" looks like a gimmick, but I find it makes the pen much more practical -- easier to grab and use. It sounds like a small thing, but it's the only fountain pen I use now, because I don't have to fiddle with the cap.

I have the original Vanishing Point, which is more svelte than the currently-sold VP-II. I have also heard good things about the Falcon -- it has a more flexible nib than the VP. [Alwin Hawkins also mentioned the Falcon] One thing to be aware of: Japanese nibs run small. A Japanese "M" is equivalent to a non-Japanese "F", etc.

I find that with fountain pens, the pen, ink, and paper all have a much greater effect over each other. Also, some inks survive being left in the pens better than others. "Noodler's Ink" seems to be much in vogue these days because of it's magical quality of becoming waterproof once it hits paper. Unfortunately I have found that if I let it sit in my Vanishing Point for too long (a week?) without use, it doesn't like to get going again. My other favorite ink -- Pelikan -- doesn't seem to suffer from this lethargy.)

Another cool think about the Vanishing Point is that you can get replaceable nibs (also true with most Pelikan pens). I've found that I like the VP "F" nib with Pelikan ink, but again the Noodler's ink doesn't flow as well through it so I have to go with an "M" nib for that ink. (For reference, I also prefer Extra Fine (.5 mm) gel pens to less fine ones.)

Jolyon Patten

I have been very happy with a fairly bog-standard Cross model (don't know which) for about 10 years now. Elegant to write with and, I know you're not interested in this but..., understated (i.e. not a Montblanc).

I don't know what you're handwriting is like, but in case it could do with a polish, I found this resource rather helpful.

Ken Hagler

Besides the sources you've already received, I should mention that it's also possible to buy good used fountain pens (from the days when all pens were fountain pens) for reasonable amounts of money. I bought a used Parker 51, a very practical un-jewelry like pen from this guy for about $100.

Pen resources

• Pen Hero
• Pens 101
• Stylophiles Online
• Richard Binder
• Joon of New York
• Ink Sampler
• PenTrace
• Rambling Snail
• Penoply
• MarcusLink
• Pen Lovers
• Fountain Pen Network Forum
• Pendemonium

Some notes, though, need to adhere to a more rigid format because they always contain the same key bits of information. Telephone message pads, receipts, and library call slips all look alike because, at some level, they all are alike.

We say that notes that have a fixed, rigid structure are formal, because they are (in a sense) mathematically well-described. Notes without a predetermined structure are informal. (Formality, in this sense, has nothing to do with fashion or etiquette; a formal note is not wearing a long dress or black tie.)

Notebooks themselves may be formal or informal. A patrol officer's book of traffic tickets is formal; each ticket that is written can easily be entered into a database, and that database may easily be designed to anticipate every kind of traffic violation, the documentation it requires and the action needed for disposition. A detective's notebook, on the other hand, may need to contain a great deal of unpredictable and informal material: the statements of witnesses, impressions of the crime scene, background notes on the location of the crime and its victims, details on the business normally transacted at that place. Detectives can't take formal notes, at least not initially, since it may not be immediately clear exactly what needs to be investigated or whether an investigation in required at all.

Often, informal notes need to acquire more formality over time. In the course of investigation or research, some names and places will prove central. It's useful to be consistent when referring to these key actors, so we (or our agents) can easily locate references to them. Often, we write informal notes and later revisit them as needed to annotate and clarify. This step is, in effect, gradual or incremental formalization.

The gradual discovery and use of Tinderbox prototypes is an additional example of incremental formalization. In a new project, we may well wish to avoid an encumbrance of prototypes and simply get down to the business of taking notes. Later, we may find that adding a few prototypes can help avoid repetitive typing, and so come to rely on prototypes more heavily. Ultimately, we may find that all the notes in a context should share a prototype, in which case we can use actions, agents, or rules to set prototypes automatically.

For example, suppose our task is to recommend precisely which new printer our company should purchase. The task is significant because we'll need to buy printers for each department, and because some previous printer purchases generated lots of wasted time and management ill-will when the equipment jammed, broke down, or turned out to be incompatible with the company's software. Yet the task is also bounded: we're just buying some printers, it's not our core business, we can't afford to spend untold hours or hire outside experts. We just need a sensible, defensible decision.

In the world of web sites and fax machines, it's easy to gather data. Still, our task is formidable:

• We have too much raw information. We need to identify the issues that matter, not learn everything that might be known about printing.
• We have too little structure into which to fit the information, because we don't yet understand the shape of the information space.
• As we learn more about available products and about our own needs, our understanding of what we need to know will undoubtedly change.
• We'll need to share our reasoning with colleagues, and we may need to defend it to management.

As a first pre-requisite of information triage, we require an efficient way to write things down -- to record information about specific products and technologies, and about our needs. For small projects, this may simply require a file folder filled with product literature and photocopied magazine articles. As the folder becomes unwieldy, you may want to build an index or summary in a notebook, or in Tinderbox.

Next, as key issues and cutpoints become evident, we'll want a clear way to tag or identify information that bears on these issues. If operating cost and printing speed appear to be critical to success, then you might want to highlight pertinent information in each document. Often, we may adopt more complex conventions to help us focus and consolidate data -- yellow highlighting for costs, blue sticky notes for throughput, green ink for missing information you need to pursue.

Finally, you'll want to consolidate the information in a map or overview that can serve as a discussion document or a recommendation. Ideally -- and this is the strength of hypertext tools -- the discussion document can survey the conclusion without unnecessary detail and yet can make all the raw information readily accessible when needed. The great failing of the "one-page executive summary", of course, is that it deprives experienced executives of the raw information that they have spent many years learning to interpret.

Discard the details that don't matter -- but only those. Since you often cannot be certain that changing political, technical, or economic constraints may not alter the decision environment, omitting detail is treacherous. Incremental formalization, hypertext links, and spatial hypertext maps let you focus on the details that seem central to the decision while retaining ready access to a wealth of additional information.

---

A foundation of the study of Spatial Hypertext is the award-winning paper "Spatial Hypertext and the Practice of Information Triage" by Marshall and Shipman (pdf).

On the one hand, permanence can empower and invigorate. In making notes, we're capturing ideas we'll need later, impressions we'll want to recall. We're speaking to our future selves, recording things now that we'll want to remember, and perhaps to act upon, later.

When Magdalena Donea left her native Romania, she writes that:

For some people, permanence carries a tacit threat. If notes aid memory, then that memory will also carry the record of your mistakes, your errors, your shortcomings.

Fear of making a blunder leads people to put off writing things down. Strategies like sketching and incremental formalization can help defuse these fears; if your original note was wrong, it can easily be corrected or amended.

Sometimes, concern over the permanence of notes may be grounded in concerns for privacy and security from litigation. A lawsuit cannot later uncover what you are thinking, but it might uncover and try to interpret the evidence of your notes. Encryption, protection, and disposability can ease these concerns but might not alleviate them entirely.