Do you write with anything that’s handy, or do you refuse to write something down until you find your favorite pen?
How upset are you when someone borrows your favorite pen and walks off with it? Do you chase them down and demand they return it? Even if it’s your boss? Do you always know where your favorite pen is?
Is J.K. Gill your favorite store?
I used to think Pilot Precise ball pens (Extra Fine) ruled, but I’ve discovered the Uniball Deluxe Micro. Awesome instrument! Incredibly smooth, doesn’t leak, lasts a long time.
My favorite pen is a beautiful Waterman fountain pen. NOBODY else touches this pen. I always know where it is.
One of the best parts is that fountain pens are so uncommon in the general workplace that it always catches attention when I use it to take notes in meetings.
Wish I had the cash for a really nice fountain pen. As it is, I mostly write (class notes, etc) with PaperMate gel-ink pens. The line is kinda broad, but the writing is very smooth.
For my final exams in December, I used my silver w/ gold accents Cross pen, engraved with my initials, that my folks got for me when I got my BA. Had to do something special, ya know?
Over the years I’ve accumulated about 5 Cross pens, about 3 Cross pencils, and recently got an interesting Pierre Cardin pen and pencil set. Haven’t used them yet.
The Pilot VBall extra fine pen (black). I buy 'em by the case. I keep a few in every room the house and always have one handy. This has resulted in several loads of ruined laundry and my wife’s constant plea to seek professional help.
I wrote a speeding ticket recently to a lady and she drove off with my Pilot pen. I was miserable the entire day, having to deal with a sputtering Crayola-type Bic pen with its crappy blue ink.
Pilot Precise V5. Black only. Possibly the finest pen ever created. I damn near refuse to write with anything else, and I’ve always got one nearby. My only complaint is that they’re so bloody expensive.
Jeremy…
Nobody ever calls me after they’ve done something smart.
I loathe it when I’m forced to write with a pen for an essay or something. I love my Zeze automatic pencil, though. I’ve had it for at least five years.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
I’m not so much a freak about quality pens as I am about collecting as many interesting ones as I can. Since I work in a hospital, I get to indulge this obsession regularly. The pharmaceutical companies are always giving away uniquely shaped pens! We get all kinds of nifty designs. Of course, they usually only write for about a week but that’s okay since we have so many!
I generally stick with Sanford Uniball micro since I like them and the office manager keeps then in stock but they are not immune to leaks. I tried a cheap Parker fountain pen and was quite please so I may get a better one.
I’m a designer, and my pen preferences border on fetishism. I have no less than 60 different pens lined up in a row across the back of my board, and pencils in such an array that I actually have to dig through a box to find my Derwent set.
Fer day-to-day sketching – Pilot Razor Points, Pentel Sign Pens, and good old Flair Pens. Felt-tips can be mashed and shaped to give you a line variety that can’t be matched.
Fer technical drawings and finished artwork – too many to mention.
Fer everyday writing – it’s high maintenance, but nothing matches a properly broken-in MontBlanc Fountain Pen.
I used antique fountain pens for years, in high school, and college. I learned not to lend them to anyone, ever, for even an instant. I used to carry a nasty leaky old cartridge pen just for loaning out. It tended to discourage the borrowers. Pencils were a pretty important issue too. No. 2 ½ Venus Velvet, the only way to go. Hard to find, too. I had a sharpener in my pocket, with a sandpaper point dresser.
Then I went through a period when an engineering drawing pen (000) with India Ink was my weapon of choice, for all things. I would sign multiple copies rather than use a ballpoint. No one wants to borrow one of those, and can’t make it write on the first try, anyway. The platinum plated tungsten steel points were tough enough to take fairly high levels of abuse. The ones I used were fairly leak proof, but I forget the manufacturer. I have twenty year old notes still crisp, black, and unfaded, from those days.
Now days it’s a Pilot Precise V7, with a Bic to loan out. Still like my real wood pencils, too. I got to the point where I like No. 2, though. I can’t see as well as I once did. I don’t carry the sharpener any more.
<P ALIGN=“CENTER”>Tris</P>
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. – **Diane Ackerman **
I have used fountain pens for years (I can’t remember how I got started with them). I have received several nice ones for gifts, including a lovely Cross Metropolitan for Christmas three years ago. However, the ones I use most, and probably like the best, are the extremely cheap (like $5) Sheaffer cartridge pens I can buy in the university bookstore. They absolutely refuse to clog up, unlike my Cross. I haven’t often taken either kind to school because people ask how I can “manage” to write with a fountain pen! This comment is, however, less prevalent in grad school than it was in undergrad.
If someone asks to borrow your pen, remove the top and keep it while they use the pen. This prevents people from going through the automatic pen motions of closing it up and putting it away–with their own stuff. I have found that this usually works.
I used whatever I can find at work. I sit in the mainstream of things here and everybody that walks by takes pens, staplers, etc. off my desk and doesnt return them. I’m a chewer of pens so occasionally I take a trip through the school and collect all of them back.
We are, each of us angels with only one wing,and we can only fly by embracing one another
I use a blue, marbled, Waterman “Phileas” fountain pen. It writes well and at about $30, it’s cheap. I never use ink cartridges because I like filling it’s reservoir from an ink bottle. I usually keep the cap if someone wants to borrow it.
For everyday work at my desk I use whatever’s handy.
I’m partial to fine point Sheaffer cartridge pens, but mostly I use a 3mm blue Sanford uni-gel.
I find it extremely difficult to find a good roller ball fine point in black ink; most skip or blot like crazy!
Being left handed, I push a pen rather than pull, which is hard on them, even though I have a very light touch. How light? My pencil is a Sanford Pro Touch II in 3mm. Most people snap it off just setting it to paper!
As mentioned already, I also used to use a drawing pen, and loved it! My kids ruined it, and now I can’t find another; any leads?
It was a Staedtler Mars, .03.
VB
Remember, you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish!