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Thread: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

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    Default Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    I have all but given up on trying to highlight fountain pen inks but I made a discovery today and found a really good highlighter by accident. TL;DR it's particular colors of COPIC markers (which are alcohol based).

    Most water-based highlighters would smudge your fountain pen inks because most FP inks are water-soluble (I don't use high maintenance non-dye inks), so this should be obvious unless there is some magic I don't know about.

    One would think to use alcohol-based highlighters like a COPIC marker, but unfortunately, alcohol-based inks tend to bleedthrough and showthrough extremely easily, even with good paper.

    So I concluded that it's not going to be easy to highlight FP ink - there is an article on JetPens talking about highlighters but I am lazy and didn't bother to read it.

    But today I was like screw it, I wanted to highlight a paragraph with a COPIC without caring about the writing behind the paper, I used the color Ice Ocean BG72 and it actually didn't bleed through and showedthrough very very minimally (I used Stalogy paper). Wow - what a revelation... who knew that it depended on the color mattered. I have an intuition that it has nothing to do with whether the color is light or dark because there are some very light yellows (highlighter yellows) that bled through and showed through, so you have to be patient and swatch test and experiment with different papers but it is much easier than I make it out to be. Once you find a color that works, you can stick with it for a while.

    Now... I am highlighting everywhere, it's a valid way to put some color to your writing as an alternative to using colored inks.

    Some of you are probably like - I knew that LONG ago... what a newb. So...what do you know about highlighting FP inks? I want to know!

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    Detman101 (December 5th, 2020)

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    Senior Member FredRydr's Avatar
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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    I underline when it comes to fountain pen ink and books. Highlighting is saved for printouts.

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    Iron gall inks such as ESSRI are highlighter proof.

    Not all non dye inks go well with highlighters.

    I never bought Platinum Carbon Black or Sailor Nano, i couldnt justify the premium price.
    Some reviews say these are stellar inks. Perhaps they truly are.

    My only carbon based ink is Hero 234 Carbon, and it smears if highlighted. It even smears if i pass my hand on it, but is otherwise resistant to washing away and archival. Or so I was told.

    Some dye based inks are resistant to highlighter, but the amount of smearing depends on what kind of highlighter you use: there are mainly two highlighter tips: porous (i.e. Stabilo) and felt like (Fila Tratto, Pelikan Textsurfer and so on). The former will smear significantly less than the latter, but this is due to the amount of ink they lay on paper, respectively (Fila Tratto are gushers).

    Old Parker Quink was somewhat better than old Waterman Encre noire. Quink smears, Waterman blends with the highlighter and makes a mess.
    They're the same ink in a different package now, so you can choose between Encre Noir in Parker bottle or Encre Noir in Waterman bottle.

    Pelikan 4001 is somewhat better. Perhaps because its drier. Blue / black, despite being IG, smears.

    Cleo Skribent inks are as above. Perhaps its just rebottled Pelikan ink.
    Last edited by aquafox; December 5th, 2020 at 05:59 AM.

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    This is all great information, thank you all. Especially you Jace!
    My wife will be interested in this information since she and my son both use highlighters and fountain pens.
    Heck, I might just use one at work one day...I usually prefer to just change pens to one with a different ink color...hehe.
    "I can only improve my self, not the world."

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    jace (December 5th, 2020)

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    Quote Originally Posted by aquafox View Post
    Not all non dye inks go well with highlighters.

    I never bought Platinum Carbon Black or Sailor Nano, i couldnt justify the premium price.
    Some reviews say these are stellar inks. Perhaps they truly are.
    Well, fwiw I used a highlighter on Platinum Carbon Black this very morning to try and ensure I put the right things in the right order for a new-to-me recipe I was trying. It didn't work; I still added ingredients in all the wrong order. But the highlighting worked just fine and caused no smears of any kind.

    As for highlighting the vast majority of FP inks that do smear, could I suggest that radically new fangled thing the coloured pencil?
    In the words of Paul Simon, you can call me Al.

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    Quote Originally Posted by grainweevil View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by aquafox View Post
    Not all non dye inks go well with highlighters.

    I never bought Platinum Carbon Black or Sailor Nano, i couldnt justify the premium price.
    Some reviews say these are stellar inks. Perhaps they truly are.
    Well, fwiw I used a highlighter on Platinum Carbon Black this very morning to try and ensure I put the right things in the right order for a new-to-me recipe I was trying. It didn't work; I still added ingredients in all the wrong order. But the highlighting worked just fine and caused no smears of any kind.

    As for highlighting the vast majority of FP inks that do smear, could I suggest that radically new fangled thing the coloured pencil?
    Or even a simple highlighter pen?
    Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    There are pencil highlighters. Levenger's used to sell a set, and I really like them, not only for fountain pens.
    My other pen is a Montblanc.

    And my other blog is a tumblr!


    And my latest ebook, for spooky wintery reading:

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CM2NGSSD

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    I use Essenti stick dry highlighters (the soft colours are lovely) and these work perfectly on every FP ink I've tried. They're also useful for fragile papers that don't like any 'wet' highlighter.

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    I wonder how children's wax crayons would work.

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    Default Re: Highlighters for fountain pen ink - troubles and revelations!

    Being a 'person of age', I use underlining to highlight any handwritten text as we did for everything in the days before highlighters. I use highlighter for printed text, and even find that newly printed ink jet copies may smear when highlighted.

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