Writing Tools

Writing tools are the pens and pencils that put marks on paper, plus the cartridges, bottled ink and leads that refill them. They differ in how the mark is made: a fountain pen feeds liquid ink to a nib, a ballpoint rolls ink on with a tiny ball, and a pencil leaves graphite and clay.

How to choose Writing Tools

  • Pencil grade. Common writing pencils are usually numbered from 1, the softest, to 4, the hardest, and the most common, No. 2, is a medium grade.
  • Fountain pen or ballpoint. A fountain pen draws ink from a reservoir down narrow capillary channels to the nib; a ballpoint rolls ink onto the page with a tiny rotating metal ball.
  • Drawing grades. Artists' drawing pencils generally run from 8B, the softest, to F, the hardest, and technical drawing pencils from HB to 10H.

About Writing Tools

Writing tools are instruments for marking paper with ink or graphite, and the pens most people use today were worked out between the 1880s and the 1940s.

The first practical fountain pens came from L.E. Waterman in 1884. Other inventors kept improving the design, and William B. Purvis patented his own fountain pen in 1890. Pencils are older still. A deposit of unusually pure graphite was found at Borrowdale in England in 1564, and it was probably whittled into sticks for writing.

A pencil's hardness is a measure of how well its core resists being worn away by the fibers of the paper.

At a glance

Main types
Fountain pens, ballpoints, rollerballs, pencils, mechanical pencils
Made from
Graphite and clay cores, liquid or paste ink
Common packing
Single pens, boxed sets, cartridge packs

Writing Tools questions

Is there lead in a pencil?

No. The core is graphite, a soft crystalline form of carbon, mixed with clay. Graphite was once taken for a kind of lead, and the name stuck after chemists showed it was carbon. While France was at war with Britain, Nicolas-Jacques Conté ground graphite to powder, mixed it with wet clay and baked the rods, and more clay still means a harder pencil.

How do fountain pens and ballpoints differ?

Fountain pens hold liquid ink in a reservoir and feed it to the nib through narrow capillary channels. Ballpoints use a tiny rotating metal ball, kept supplied from a reservoir in the barrel, that rolls the ink onto the page. Fountain pens take cartridges or bottled ink, and a ballpoint takes a fresh refill when the old one runs dry.

Who invented the ballpoint pen?

The Hungarian inventor László Bíró filed a British patent for his ballpoint on June 15, 1938, and during World War II he fled the Nazis and settled in Argentina. Britain's Royal Air Force later ordered more than 30,000 of his pens for its navigators. Early ballpoints often leaked and smeared until a quick-drying ink and a leakproof design came along.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica; Smithsonian; US Geological Survey.

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