Never Mind the Bleedthrough

by Dwayne Lively

A lot of fountain pen users lament that many notebooks, even some expensive ones, allow enough bleedthrough and ghosting to render the backside of a page unusable. To them, an ordinary 48 page Field Notes notebook is actually a 24 page notebook.

I’ve personally embraced bleedthrough. Dozens of years ago I toured Charles Dickens house in London and one of the displays featured a letter written in crosshatch. This was a way to save paper by writing in one direction on the page, then turning the page and writing across what you’d just written.

I was fascinated enough by this way of writing that I experimented with it by writing in my journal in crosshatch. At first it was strange, but I soon learned to read it.

Reading crosshatch is interesting. After a few moments, the vertical lines fade into gray and you find yourself focusing on the horizontal lines. After you turn the page, there’s a moment of adjustment, but then you are able to see the new lines and keep reading.

bleedthrough-1
A modern example of cross hatch written quickly on copy paper.

bleedthrough-2
The same example turned sideways.

Embracing bleedthrough and ghosting is like that. The spots become background to the writing. They are a different color, or at least a lighter one, even if you haven’t changed inks.

Granted, too much bleedthrough is bad, but most of the time it’s not worth wasting an entire page.

bleedthrough-3
Handwriting on the back of particularly bad bleedthrough and ghosting.

I don’t write crosshatch anymore. My handwriting is bad enough that I often have trouble reading it myself and don’t need to add extra complications. I don’t need to try to turn a 48 page notebook into a semi-legible 96 page notebook.

However, other than that, I’ve fully embraced the bleedthrough and the ghosting. It adds character to a notebook and it means a 48 page notebook is always 48 pages.

bleedthrough-4
Fountain pen bleedthrough and ghosting on a Field Notes notebook.

 

Dwayne Lively is a writer and English teacher living in Japan. At his blog Mere Blather he writes about life, Japan, Albania and pens and paper. You can follow him @DwayneLively on Twitter and @blatherama on Instagram

1 Comment

Comments are closed.