I use Pentel EnerGel .7mm Metal Tip exclusively. Never had a problem with them and they last forever. The only secret to using them is that they come with a little plastic cap on the ball you have to remove before you use it for the first time. Sometimes I forget and get pissed at a new pen for not working. Then memory returns…
I tend to place pens into two distinct categories: ones which are used for calligraphy and ones that you grab to jot down a doctor appointment, or phone number, name, and address. For the latter, I use whatever is on hand at the moment.
I have two smaller-sized glasses on the kitchen counter containing pens and permanent markers. The pens are almost entirely giveaways from businesses. They work fine and eventually give out, when they are replaced with similar ones.
I don’t remember buying Bic or other pens for years.
I have ditched disposable pens for fountain pens. They are wonderful to write with and the choice of ink colours is incredible. Of course there are some junky fountain pens however, they are generally better than ball points.
My pen of choice is the Pilot Custom 823. My grail pen is the Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age.
I used to buy the cheapest pens. They have a clear plastic holder. I used them in college taking lecture notes.
That style got undependablr a long time ago.
I started buying boxes of office quality like we have in the supply closet at work.
I don’t buy gel pens. They smear and get on my hand.
To the point it affected your keyboard.
Some gel pens will smear. Some do not. Same thing for non-“gel” pens. Try before you buy.
Exactly. The Uni Ball on my desk smears like crazy. The Pentel in my shirt pocket doesn’t. Both are gel.
I’ve found that when the pen doesn’t write that it is the ink at the tip that is dry. Rather than scribbling on paper, try scribbling the pen on the bottom of your shoe. Or if writing in a spiral notebook, scribbling on the coated cover of the notebook. In my experience this works 99.3% of the time.
Even within a brand there are variations, like the 0.5 mm Gelly Rolls [fine point] are good; I will buy them by the dozen, but not so much the 0.7 mm.
There are a few reasons I use fountain pens, one of which is many times ballpoint peens seem to have issues writing on paper.
Depends on both the ink and the paper. Some fountain pen ink will feather/bleed through more than a Biro in certain circumstances. E.g., watery ink on pulp.
Very nice. I have three in my regular rotation (that is to say when I’m not using pencils). A Rotring Newton with a fine, stiff nib that’s great for taking notes and writing to-do lists in tiny print. A Lamy 2000 (currently AWOL but I have hopes of finding it buried in drawer) that is comfy for more flowing notes, like writing quickly in a meeting. And a Pelikan M805 Souveran that has a free-flowing medium nib that’s great for writing a note in a card or signing documents with a flourish.
I use a Pilot G-2 size 10 at work. I’d use a Pigma Micron 08, but they won’t buy me those.
We have ample numbers of disposable usually company branded pens around the office. I have literally multiple dozens accumulated in my house. Emptied out of my pocket end of day and forget to bring back. Many from before the last rebranding.
They are cheap. But most still work. I toss first time they don’t. Or they literally crack and fall apart.
I remember the days of having a real pen that I replaced ink in …
Another fan of the Pilot G-2. The finer the better. (I do crosswords.)
But … I seem to be increasingly having pens just crap out on me. The ball falls out! I worry that the quality control is going down.
I use cheap ones at work for obvious reasons. I have some students that love using a fountain pen saying it’s easier to write with because you don’t have to press as hard. I need one for my briefcase however and I like the look of your three. I might have to get one.
I remember in the 90’s several coworkers in Computing Services suffered carpnel tunnel.
They switched to fountain pens and it helped. Fountain pens require less pressure. I never got the hang of using them without a mess.
I began experiencing tingling during the day and numbness in my hands at night. I transfered to HR as there server support and wrote database reports part-time. I cut my keyboard time in half. Thankfully that worked and the symptoms went away after a few months.
I made a change just in time. Two friends had wrist surgery and still had pain if they did too much keyboard work.
I avoid writing much with a pen. My hand tires quickly. If it’s a paragraph or more the Word processor is my friend.
It’s OK. At one place where I worked, that is what we had in the office supply closet, in various colours, along with blue and black fountain pen ink. You are saying that modern Pilot G-2’s are not consistently reliable, less so than in the past?
That is true. However, all the discussion about pens being or not being useless junk obviously applies to fountain pens as well; you can’t single them out. A modern fountain pen can easily be a cheap piece of crap or a pleasure to write with. Try before you buy!!!
I never had a problem with keeping my good ones at work for a long stretch of years. Helps that much of that time, I had my own office, and that I worked at small startups that had a little bit of a different cultural expectation around behavior.
EXCEPT - I lent my Rotring once to the woman that ran our consulting arm. She was super intelligent, polished in front of clients, and had some sort of adrenaline disorder that triggered disproportionate reactions to mundane events. Twice in our travels TSA agents threw her out of the airport, and when she tried to write with my Rotring, she mashed it into the paper so hard she bent the nib to a 90 degree angle. I sent it to a nib service guy who not only fixed it, he tweaked it to my specs to make it absolutely perfect for my use.
And my accursed Lamy 2000 - the first one rolled into a crack between the window sill and the wall of the old industrial loft that was my office. I heard it clinking its way down into the brickwork of the facade below and called it a goner. Its replacement was stolen off my porch and months later the postal inspectors were only able to return a shredded box from a meth facility they raided. The third one is currently missing, probably in my house, probably.