writing
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This diary is probably written with pen and ink. What kind of material did the authors of the diaries mostly use? A pencil?
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cyngast
moderator
Erik, you ask the best questions! You always make me think and say, "Hmmm..."
I think the authors used whatever they had available to write the diaries. I've seen some that look like pencil, others in ink. I worked on one where the author used green ink, which unfortunately didn't do well in the digitizing process. I've also seen several that were typed; sometimes those are very clear, but other times you can tell the typewriter was battered a bit with letters out of alignment or it badly needed a new ribbon.
This page does look like it was written with pen and ink. It almost looks like both black and blue ink, but I suppose the darker areas are where he refilled his pen.
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In one of the books I read about WW1, it mentioned that they (maybe the adjutants), guarded their typewriters like gold making sure they knew where they were when they moved and were well packed up. Quite a few of the diaries are typewritten.
Also during World War One, portable typewriters proved invaluable and were used in the trenches to produce typed reports and correspondence.
Some answers to this question on the following link: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110426060407AAgujD8
".. .They wrote with both pens and pencils, but not pens we usually use as ball point pens were not invented until 1946 by a czech. In the trenches the most common instrument was a pencil."
Also - " ...A number of firms made pens with a compartment to carry ink pellets, which were to be placed in the barrel and dissolved in water; most such pens were eyedroppers, but lever and button-fillers were also produced; sometimes also called a trench pen, in allusion to their military-oriented marketing during WW1 Also - WW1-era term for an ink-pellet pen, although by all evidence such pens were not actually used in any significant numbers in the trenches". Link: http://www.vintagepens.com/glossary.shtml
I notice that the handwriting in some of these WW1 dairies is extremely good. Have come across some elaborate handwriting on some cover pages for diaries Although some handwritten diaries being faint and some not so good, understandably, I think during to the war situation when they were written.
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cyngast
moderator
Thanks for those links, Marie. I think the discussion in the first one is more about what the ordinary soldiers used to write personal diaries or letters, but it applies to the official diaries, too. Although as I mentioned above, I've seen diaries written with all kinds of writing material.
Some of the handwriting is quite elegant. Early on, I came across one that had writing that at first glance looked incomprehensible but turned out to be extremely readable. At one point I looked into the size of the actual pages because I had come across writing so small I didn't see how anyone could do that. They are somewhat larger than they appear on screen, at least on my laptop, closer to the size of my entire laptop. This video gives a sense of the actual size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J5chxP0uA0
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Very interesting Video.
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David_Underdown
moderator
Possibly the original example is written using a chinagraph pencil - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grease_pencil
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