Probatio pennae

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Probatio pennae (also written probatio pennę; in medieval Latin; literally "pen test") is the medieval term for breaking in a new pen.

A tenth-century probatio pennae: the first known Dutch language fragment.

A scribe would normally do this by writing a few lines of text on a piece of blotting paper after cutting a new pen to see if it wrote well. Sometimes, these blotting papers survived due to being used afterwards as book binding material; they often provide unique, less "serious" textual material that would otherwise have been lost. A famous example is the first fragment of Dutch literature, which survived from a tenth century probatio pennae.