This post just got inspired by (trying) to sign another receipt where the restaurant had a clogged ballpoint that would write only intermittently.

I don’t carry a pen with me. Most extended text I work with these days is typed, so don’t use one enough to really do so, but I have thought about doing so.

There are a couple of pen communities on Lemmy (which I’ll mention below, for folks who might be interested). Thought I’d get a broader cross-section view of the general public, though; pen enthusiasts tend to have their own, often kinda niche, positions.

A few years back, I decided that I’d hit up an online pen store, get a variety of pens, and see what I liked.

In general, I’ve found that:

• Ballpoints are the most-common pen I see in the US. They use oil-based ink. They require a high amount of pressure to write with. They are inexpensive, don’t smear, and don’t bleed. And they are the only option if you need to use carbon paper, like on a check, due to that high pressure. But they are also exasperatingly prone to clogging, particularly on some receipts – not sure if it’s due to some sort of coating on the receipt paper. If you particularly like a given case, you can get non-disposable pens with semi-standardized inserts to “refill” a pen; these contain a replacement tip and ink container.

• Rollerball pens or gel pens use water-based ink. I’m generally pretty enthusiastic about them; they’re probably my favorite as things stand, though I grew up mostly with ballpoints. They do have some drawbacks: they are more-prone than ballpoints to smearing (for those left-handed people out there who don’t write right-handed and drag their hand through fresh ink when writing, I suspect that that’s especially annoying). They’re more-prone than to bleeding through paper (though this depends on on the paper and ink). However, my experience has been that they do much better than ballpoints when it comes to writing consistently without clogging. They also write much more-smoothly than ballpoints; the tip’s interaction with the paper is closer to “gliding” over it, is less-fatiguing than writing with a ballpoint; many people find this to be a rather-pleasant surprise if they’re used to ballpoints. Larger-diameter tips are even smoother. I have no idea why I see fewer problems with clogging with these, as intuitively I’d think that “water would dry out, and oil wouldn’t”. But, well, I just rarely see clogging with 'em, whereas with ballpoints, it’s a near-universal. As with ballpoints, you can get semi-standardized inserts to “refill” a pen if you want a non-disposable. I would encourage most people to, if they have only used ballpoints in their life, to give a rollerball a try at some point; I was significantly happier.

• Felt-tip pens have a solid core through which ink moves. I used to think of these mostly as permanent Sharpies for writing on odd surfaces (thick, not something you’d write with), highlighters (again, special-purpose, not something you’d write with) or washable, large-diameter pens for kids doing coloring or something, again not what you’d write with. But I have had some narrow-diameter felt-tip pens, and they tend to work pretty well. They don’t clog. They can dry out, if you leave them uncapped, but you can normally get even those going by adding a drop of water to the tip and letting the pen sit for a while. These do have some downsides – if you let the tip sit on one place on paper, they tend to bleed through, since it keeps dispensing ink. That’s not a problem with ballpoints or rollerballs. My experience is that they have more friction than rollerballs, don’t have quite the “gliding” feel. You have a lot of options as to size of the tip, can get very large ones. For writing, you probably want a narrow one; these have a metal sleeve and just expose a bit of the felt at the end. Apparently it’s possible, for some of these, to get refills, though I don’t believe that it’s common; these come in the form of liquid ink. Normally, I believe that these are disposables.

• Fountain pens. I really thought that these were entirely-obsolete, though they certainly have some ardent fans. I’ve read a lot from enthusiasts about how one should clean nibs, only store them in particular orientations, etc. However, on a whim, I picked up a package of cheap disposables. I then stored them in a hot car for years, didn’t clean them at all, ignored storage orientation, did pretty much everything that I was told shouldn’t be done with fountain pens. They wrote without a hitch. So I decided to give 'em more of a chance. These have something of a “gliding” feel, kind of like rollerballs. The tips are a bit more-fragile than rollerballs or ballpoints, can damage them by stabbing things. The big drawback: these guys are prone to bleeding through paper; having a sheet of blotting paper or maybe a clipboard beneath when writing to soak up any extra ink is a good idea, unless you’ve got more control than I do. I did pick up some thicker, more-expensive paper, and that helps a considerable bit, but obviously, if you intend to use only one type of special paper for writing, that’s a pretty substantial constraint on pen use. They also tend to be more prone to smearing. Like felt-tips, as long as you keep the nib down, they’ll keep dispensing ink, so you gotta train yourself to lift the nib if you’re stopping movement. The big selling point with these, as best I can tell, is that you have an extremely wide variety of inks, and using non-disposable fountain pens that permit for refills is very common. Some people mix their own. The inks have various properties – here’s a page talking about sheen, shimmer, and shading – that can let them create really visually-impressive effects. They can dispense all sorts of exotic inks that wouldn’t work well in ballpoint, rollerball, or felt tip pens. I’ve never taken advantage of this, don’t write enough for it, but I do think that it’s neat; I have occasionally thought about picking up a fountain pen plotter, but don’t think that I’d likely plot enough for it to be worthwhile. Looking at the state of plotters and printer manufacturers, which frequently use a razor and blades model for ink, I think that it’d be nice to just be able to get whatever consumables from whomever.

There are a few other kinds of exotic pens, like fudepens (or “brush pens”) that are really more-interesting when doing stuff like East Asian lettering or some kinds of art, but aren’t really what you’d want for writing in normal-sized Latin script. Or paint markers; also not really something you’d expect to normally write with.

In general, I found that I preferred larger tips. As long as I don’t have to write in a too-confined space, ink flow with ballpoints and rollerballs was more-consistent and with them or felt tips, the writing was smoother.

As a kid, I used to use wood or mechanical pencils, but unless one needs erasability, I don’t really feel that they stand up to pens. With wood pencils, one needs to lug around a sharpener. With either, the graphite tends to smear over time; fold up a paper with pencil writing and put it in a pocket, and it’ll slowly blur to unrecognizability. And the graphite gets on things (and I’d just as soon not be having electrically-conductive dust being dumped everywhere).

For me, the big issue with going crazy on pens in 2024 is that I just don’t use one all that much. Even a lone disposable pen will last me a very long time. But it is nice to still be able to write consistently when one does want to write, and I felt that I’d never really sat down and looked into the various options out there.

Since I think that it’s worthwhile to mention relevant communities to help people find them, if they haven’t yet:

[email protected]

[email protected]. Doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.

[email protected]. No traffic.

[email protected]. Only a little traffic.

[email protected]. No traffic.

There are also some .ml-based communities; I tend to use non-ml-based communities in preference to .ml-based communities myself, but for those who feel otherwise, there are [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected], none of which are seeing much activity.