Handwriting, does the pen make a difference?

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My hand writing is not the best, I can make it neat but this requires a lot of effort and hence if I do write neat I am very slow.

I can only use ball point pens because my writing smudges with the other kind and the ink ends up all over my hand.

Does a more expensive pen make a difference?

e.g. I mean a bic/staedtler ball point (costs 20-30p a pen), compared to parker ball point (cost min £5 a pen)

I tend to have better handwriting with certain pens.

Alas, the more expensive the pen, the better my handwriting.

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-m ... l-pencils/

I practice my handwriting with a uni-ball Kuru Toga mechanical pencil

Have you tried roller ball pens? The type of pen you use definitely has a bearing on handwriting, I've found, and roller balls are the best of both.
The speed of a bic with (a fast drying) ink and since it's fast drying then hopefully, no smudging?

My handwriting is kinda chicken scratch ish, probably because I type 99.9% of the time when I write. But I notice it's a little easier to write better with a smooth ball point pen, like a uniball brand or a signing/signature pen.

I like pens with a smoother glide. I can feel the catches on the paper when I'm writing, and it's distracting.

For something cheap, I really like PaperMate. I can usually pick up the 12 pack of Blues (according to their website, they're called WriteBros) for under $2 CAD. These are actually my favourite pens. Sometimes I just watch myself write, and it almost feels like there's no pen in the middle, just my hand doing the drawing.

The Flexgrip Ultra are softer in the hand, but I find that the tip of the pen isn't quite as secure in the case; it's not going to go anywhere, but when you move the tip on and off the paper, it'll sometimes make a clicking noise as it hits the side. Still a nice smooth glide.

The erasable pens aren't really worth it imo; they're not very smooth to write with, and they don't really erase very well (of course, it's probably been 10 years since I've tried one; maybe they've come up with better erasing technology by now ). They also smudge a little more.

The Eagle doesn't feel as smooth as the WriteBros, and I'm not partial to the feeling of the case in my hand, but that's just a personal opinion. I think they may be cheaper than the WriteBros though.

The Gels of course are going to be the smoothest, but they dry much slower, and as you said you tend to smudge, I would advise against them.

http://www.papermate.com/pages/products (No, I don't work for them )

Are you writing with your left or right hand?
Lefties have a bigger problem with ink smudging because their hand goes over what they just wrote--assuming you are writing from left to right. This isn't always a good assumption--the Japanese write from right to left. They also go from top to bottom.

Strangely I can't for the life of me write well with most pens because they feel too loose to me (in terms of the feeling of the sliding of the tip off the sheet). I almost always use a standard 2.5 HB pencil (the old-school non-mechanical variety). Even the mechanical ones feel odd to me. The shape of the pencil, the hexagonal base cylindrical shape and the sturdy feeling of the graphite sliding on the paper makes it more comfortable for me whereas the smooth cylindrical shape of mechanical pencils and pens tend to put me off and their writing feels far too loose to me.

I notice a similar trend with mouse sensitivity with PC games. If the sensitivity is too high, that feeling of deliberate synchronised motion that I feel is similar to that of writing with a pencil plummets away and I enter into a state of unease.

My tactile perception is more acute and my skin and hairs react strongly to minute changes in air pressure, dust particles or other small matter with a wriggling hair-standing sensation. When I write with a pencil, I can feel how sturdy the tip is- whether it's a bit too brittle- even if it's not going to break- and it throws me off. I don't know why I'm so sensitive to it, but it feels that even slight vibrations of the graphite tip around its center gets transmitted to my hand and amplified and it skews my control.

Thanks for all the suggestions/input, and I am right handed.

@BTDT I do prefer writing with pencils but you can't use them in exams.

@boofle I think it was pilot roller ball pens that I've used and they were very smudgy!

For roller ball pens, I prefer Papermate ones. They feel "softer" than average while writing with them (I tend to make holes in paper with pointier roller ball pens and it looks like a pig's job after ). And as they have a matt body, my hand won't slip.
I like fountain pens the most though.

^^^ meant this, soz. I swear by em. They're all roller balls to me but the make is uni-ball

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002XZLGWG/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_6iKZwbQ4J82HE

I wish I could write better with ballpoints than with more expensive pens--but I can't.

I just write better with more expensive pens.

I write with either hand, though I am nominally a leftie that said, with either hand I write much better with a nice F-A-T and well-padded pen with a smooth rolling action, on thick paper which [due to the increased friction between the ball-point and the fibers] acts as a governor on the movement of my hand across the paper, making my handwriting more smooth and graceful.

My handwriting is awful, regardless of pen. It's improved little to none since the age of about 12, and I'm now 20. I can type fast though thankfully, makes up for it.

I can write with any pen, but I have a slight preference not to write with a ballpoint. Sometimes the little bullet at the end (hard to describe textually) doesn't roll smoothly, maybe because of lack of ink.

I have no problems with other kind of pens. Sometimes I don't like to write with a whiteboardmarker, because the ink may be lacking. It is hard to read, what I have written on the whiteboard.

People say that I have a very beautiful handwriting. This may be true, because it is the same handwriting (with some minor chances) as I had when I was a 6 year old child. My handwriting looks like printed letters. While many people write digits as lower case letters, I make digits big: they are as big as uppercase letters.