I can never answer this question with a sure fire yes or no, because this is really subjective to how much you are comfortable with spending on a writing instrument, your budget, your personal experience with fountain pens, and most importantly your preference. The only way for you to get an answer is to try out as many pens as you can, give yourself a chance to experience the way the pen sits in your hand, the feel of the nib touching the page, and how your hand feels after using it for a while.

Practice. Practice. Practice. Even if it’s just 10 minutes everyday, a practice session is a practice session. Choose a “font” (calligraphers call them “hand”) that you find beautiful, try to replicate the strokes and usually a few months later you’d find your handwriting changing in a way that’s not entirely the same as the “font” but something unique to you with your own flair to each letter.

In general, you have a cap and a barrel that are usually exposed to the outside world, and a piece of steel or gold that makes up the nib: protect them by, obviously, not putting them against hard surfaces and especially with force, dropping, throwing, grinding, etc…To clean them up, a bit of warm water is enough, hand soap is fine for modern pens, but do not apply any abrasive or buffing compound on to your writing instrument. Oh, and because a lot of fountain pen parts are made of plastics, so rubbing alcohol on them isn’t a good idea as well since it contains some part acetone and will eat away at the plastic.

This is taken from the FAQ of Faber-Castell and in my opinion it is a really good middle ground to start with; each brand grind their nibs differently with plus or minus differences compare to the numbers you see here, and also the width of the line is also affected by factors such as the ink and paper you use, and how much force you are putting on your pens as well.

The nibs differ in the stroke width and the associated writing feeling. The stroke width of a nib can not be measured precisely, as there are many influencing factors, such as the paper, the way the fountain pen is held, the writing method, ink output etc. Various nib thicknesses are available depending on the fountain pen.

The nib widths are outlined below:

EF (extra fine) = 0.45 – 0.55 mm

For a light handwriting, without pressure. Extremely fine writing style.

F (fine) = 0.60 - 0.70 mm

For small handwriting, with a low level of pressure. Fine writing style.

M (medium) = 0.80 - 0.90 mm

Suitable for all handwriting types. Medium-width stroke with normal writing pressure.

B (broad) = 1.00 - 1.10 mm

For large handwriting and signatures. Medium-width stroke with normal writing pressure.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to how expensive a pen might be. With a budget of $200 you will be able to grab any pen from the majority of the fountain pen products available, and to many, that’s enough for a fountain pen that can last a lifetime. The materials and the amount of handwork that go into the making of a pen is really the 2 main factors, and also there is branding and rarity, but that’s a topic for another day.

I’ll be updating a page with personal recommendation for all budget range, so check back on this question to see for yourself which one would fit you the most.

Of course you can, but there is a catch. Originally, fountain pens are created so that you don’t have to carry a bunch of stuff like quills, nibholders, nibs, ink bottles, cleaning water and cloths… to do the task of writing. However, the tip of a fountain pen nib is welded with a piece of iridium and grounded so that it can create the desired linewidth, as opposed to a pointed dip pen nib that does not have any tipping material, which needed to be replaced as often as once a week.

There are fountain pens with dip pen nibs attached to them, but I would not recommend those to people who just started learning calligraphy; but in general, look for EF nibs or italic / 1.1mm nibs when you want to combine the use of your fountain pen with learning calligraphy.

I will go more in-depth in a future article, so check back with this question on a later date.

As many as your budget allows lol. In all seriousness, I’m sure that you are a normal person like me and can hold only 1 pen at a time, probably 1 is enough for your entire life. I would go as far as selling all my pens and keep a single Platinum Preppy as the only pen I’d use for the rest of my life but I still appreciate the writing experience of other pens in the collection, so as of right now the number I would say to you is around 2-3. Pens are meant to be used.

In general I clean my pens every time I finish a filling of ink, so it could be in the range of 1 week or up to 2 months. However, there are those tricky inks such as pigmented or permanent ink that is harder to clean out of if left inside a pen barrel for a long time, so I would suggest flushing your pens every 2 weeks and try to finish your filling as quick as possible so that there is no staining problem or clogging the nib and feed.

This comes with practice and also modern pens are designed so that leaking and burping problems are not as common as you might think. As of writing this answer I would say that I get inky fingers once or twice a week, and since most of the ink I use are water-dyed ink with no pigments in them, the inky fingers can be easily cleaned with a wash of the hand under the sink.