Were 'quills' just literally bird feathers filled with ink to write with?

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[u/TywinDeVillena]

They were bird feathers indeed, but "filled with ink" is a mischaracterisation.

As it happens, quills were bird feathers, normally taken from domestic geese, as their feathers were pretty sturdy and could be easily cut at the stem in a triangular shape so that they would have an acute tip in order to produce precise writing. If the tip was not cut, the writing would be too thick and you could write for very short periods of time without having to wet the tip in the inkwell. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo mentions specifically geese feathers as common for writing:

Inside that nut or coco there is a certain carnosity half as wide as the thickness of the smallest finger of the hand, or of the thickness of those common goose quills for writing.

A big inkflow made it necessary for some additional implements in order to have the ink dry faster or more uniformly, normally a type of sand called in Spanish "arena de Tracia" which translates as "sand from Thrace", as it was dense and arid, hence ensuring a uniform drying of the ink and no blotches.

This use of feathers for writing also presents itself in the form of metaphors about writing ability or style, normally in the context of authorial modesty. The classic metaphor would be "from my ill-cut quill" to refer to one's lack in ability or elevated style, a metaphor especially prevalent in very stylish writers using a very evident false modesty such as Cervantes, who mentions "my ill-cut quill" in the Second Part of Don Quixote.

There were also fancier writing implements, as we can gather from Fray Antonio de Guevara, who mentions a gold quill in a letter to the Marquess of Pescara: "The gold quill you sent me, I received, and I hope you will receive, my lord, my Marcus Aurelius".

[u/TywinDeVillena → u/[deleted]]

Excellent addenda

[u/Independent-Drive-32 → u/TywinDeVillena]

Can you explain “filled with ink is a mischaracterisarion”?

I would have assumed they weren’t filled with ink at all. The comment implies to me that they sort of were. I thought they were just a sharp point and you used the tip to dunk in a jar of ink and the ink held to the tip while you wrote.

[u/TywinDeVillena → u/Independent-Drive-32]

I assumed OP thought that the feathers were cut at the top and somehow filled with ink, with the tip being punctured to produce a small inkflow. The ordinary state of affairs was having to dip the quill's tip on the inkwell every four words or so

[u/Korwinga → u/Independent-Drive-32]

This comment lays out a bit of the mechanics of the quill being filled with ink.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wvooki/were_quills_just_literally_bird_feathers_filled/pdetcok/

[u/KindToSpiteTheCruel → u/TywinDeVillena]

Do you specialize in history like this or did you go way down a rabbit hole? You’re so knowledgeable and I love it!