Broad-edge basics: pen angle at 30 degrees and why I kept drifting

2025-07-05 · 3 min read

After a year of pointed-nib scripts I started broad-edge work in June, with a 2 mm nib and a foundational hand, which is the upright round hand most books begin with. The whole point of a broad-edged nib is that the thick and thin strokes come from the angle of the nib to the baseline, not from pressure, and the angle for foundational is 30 degrees. I knew that. I still spent three weeks drifting to 45 degrees without noticing.

The symptom was that my o was lopsided. At 30 degrees the thinnest points of an o are at about eleven o’clock and five o’clock, and the letter looks balanced. At 45 degrees the thin points rotate to twelve and six, the sides get thick, and the letter looks like it is leaning back. I kept correcting the o by changing how I drew it, when the problem was the pen in my hand. It took drawing a 30-degree line on the guide sheet and physically laying the nib edge along it before every single letter for a week before the habit set.

Why I drifted: comfort. Holding the nib at 30 degrees means the hand is rotated slightly clockwise from where it naturally rests, and over a line of writing the wrist relaxes back toward 45. The fix was partly awareness and partly moving the paper: turning the sheet about 10 degrees counterclockwise lets the hand rest naturally while the nib stays at 30 to the baseline. I had been keeping the paper square to the desk out of some idea of neatness.

The practice routine that is working is simple and dull. Ten minutes of straight strokes, verticals and horizontals, checking the thick-thin ratio: a vertical at 30 degrees should be about 87 percent of the nib width, a horizontal about half. Then ten minutes of the o alone. Then one line each of the letters built from the o, which are c, e, d, q, b and p. Then, and only then, words. The nib width for foundational gives an x-height of four and a half nib widths, so with a 2 mm nib that is 9 mm, and I rule every sheet at that spacing with a 2 mm pencil ladder in the margin. After five weeks my o is finally round, and I have started to understand why people say the broad edge teaches you to see letters rather than draw them.