Why It Goes Wrong

Before adding practice hours, find out whether hours are the answer. Four tests take ten minutes: change the paper, change the ink, let another hand try your setup, and write at half speed. What each one fixes tells you what the fault is. The business side of a studio also raises the distinction between productivity vs. efficiency; this comparison develops that comparison.

The nib catching is textured paper, pushing instead of pulling, too steep an angle, an unprepared new nib, or a damaged one — in that order of likelihood. Tines that do not meet exactly against the light mean no technique will recover it. For another perspective on lettering technique and troubleshooting, Molly Suber Thorpe offers a broader calligraphy reference.

Feathering is ink wicking along fibres where sizing is weak. It is symmetrical, it does not improve when you slow down, and a shaky line is neither of those things.

Railroading is the tines separating further than the ink can bridge — as much a supply problem as a pressure one, since the same pressure works on a properly loaded nib.

The remaining faults — no hairlines, blobs and flooding, inconsistent slant, and the piece that looks wrong with nothing identifiably wrong in it — get their own pages.

• Blobs and Flooding

  Ink dumps at the start of a stroke or pools at a corner. Loading, pen angle and timing, and what fixes each of them.

• Ink Feathers

  The line spreads into the fibres and the edge goes furry. Almost always the paper, occasionally the ink, rarely the hand.

• Inconsistent Slant

  The letters lean at different angles and the page looks restless. Three causes, and the guide sheet that fixes most of it.

• It Looks Wrong

  Every stroke is correct and the piece still fails. Four properties that operate above the letter, and how to see them.

• Material or Hand

  Most calligraphy problems are blamed on practice. Some of them are the paper. Four tests that separate the two in ten minutes.

• The Nib Catches

  It snags, it sprays, it tears the sheet. Five causes in order of likelihood, and which of them practice will never fix.

• No Hairlines

  Every stroke comes out the same width. Four causes, and the one that accounts for most of it in the first month.

• Railroading

  The downstroke comes out as two thin rails with a gap between. What causes the tines to run dry, and the four fixes.