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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

I don't think so. I have lived, studied, and taught in three different European countries and everywhere, a sizeable proportion of students used fountain pens (a large majority in the case of France). For my part, I use mostly rollers and fountain pens, and I hate the high pressure needed to use ballpoints.

EDIT: In any case, even if most people use only ballpoint pens, it seems very hard to live without ever crossing a fountain pen user (as seems to be the case for the author of this article).

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This definitely varies by country.

In the US, fountain pen use is common among people who have a particular interest in pens (e.g. collecting them), and almost zero among everyone else. I’d say they’re roughly comparable to mechanical keyboards in this respect.

No one at any level of school is required to use fountain pens; typically, students use a mix of graphite pencils, ballpoint pens, and rollerballs.

I would expect a large fraction of Americans, maybe even the majority, to be surprised to learn that fountain pens are still in common use anywhere in the world.

I am born in 1981 in denmark, I have never ever seen a fountain pen in use in my schooling or anywhere else in real life (maybe on TV or something). Its always been pencils or ballpoint (or more modern versions of that.)

I don't think I've ever seen someone use a fountain pen in person. In school most people used pencils almost exclusively, and the exceptions used ballpoint or gel pens.

Growing up in India it was pretty common to see others in school use fountain pens, although most (including me) used gel pens due to the impracticality and cost of fountain pens.

Gel pens feel so much better than regular ball point pens and are still almost as cheap.

I reside in the US and have met only one person over the past 25 years who used a fountain pen.

In Finland at least I have never seen anybody use a fountain pen in real life. I’m pretty sure almost nobody even knows how to use one. Not that schools make pupils use ballpoints either—it’s 100% pencils here.

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