A write pole for a read/write head of a disk drive system has a tapered surface on a leading edge thereof. Preferably, the tapered surface has a taper angle of between 0 and 20 degrees from a plane normal to the ABS. By having a write pole with a taper in this manner, sufficient write fields can be achieved even with thinner write pole tips on the ABS surface. By decreasing the thickness of the write pole tip in this manner while maintaining sufficiently high write fields, the skew profile of a write head can be decreased and areal density increased.