The Physiognomist, those bendy pencils you mention are probably plastic or polymer. Empire® makes some pencils like that, and I don’t like them.
The thickness of leads in wood-cased pencils does vary by hardness. Hard leads are less likely to break, so they can be (and usually are) made thinner than soft leads.
emjay, you’re right. I can’t even blame this one on the editor. I’m always ragging on Ed for messing up my degree signs and now this. Let’s pretend this didn’t happen. What do you accept in the way of bribes for looking the other way?
I think it is curious that the tattoo I gave myself as a child is still perfectly visible (mine is in the exact center of my heel, from trying to curl up on the couch while doing my math homework) but the tattoos I have given myself since with my mechanical pencils are invisible almost as soon as the wound heals. Perhaps the lead in mechanical pencils is milled finer or something, so leaves less debris in the wound?
To Q.E.D…have I mentioned that I am terrified of being wrongly chastised by authority figures?
bibliophage, that personal message was all the recognition I could hope for in response to my first post! Consider the other way looked.
Picayunely yours,
MJ
Do people really use pencils for everyday writing?
I understand sketching and drawing and all, but I’ve never noticed anyone taking notes at a meeting in pencil, or drafting a letter in pencil.
My kids do their homework in pencil, but outside of that, I doubt I’ve written anything longer than a phone number with a pencil since about sixth grade.
I’m not knocking it, y’understand, I’m just surprised. Huh.
Oh yeah- I use pencils all the time to take notes in grad school- you can erase them much better than “erasable” pens. This lets me draw better diagrams in the notes than I could with pen.
And, back when I had a job, I frequently used pencils to mark up source code and output tentatively, as well as generally used them to take phone call notes, etc…
I have two pencil tattoos. One is by my knee, from second grade or so when I was having a hissy over homework with a freshly-sharpened pencil in my hand. The other is from middle school or so, I think, and is in my right ring finger - I japped myself with a mechanical pencil, and the lead broke off.
I fell for pencils in a big way when I read Petroski’s book. It’s enough to convince a person that the pencil is simply … the superior writing implement. Really.
Anyway, I think pencils might be more popular if people weren’t made to use poor quality ones, or what’s worse, fair to decent quality ones. A lot of people are simply unaware that not all pencils are the same. At least the people who buy office supplies for where I work are in need of enlightenment.
It appears that pencil manufacturers try to make their leads more durable (against both wear and bumps) by adding some hardening ingredient. The problem is, it tends to give the lead an unpleasant waxy feel against the paper. And this mostly happens with pencils that you’d expect to be pretty good, judging from the price and the big name manufacturer. The cheap ones usually just have really soft lead that wears quickly and you have to sharpen them constantly. Only a few pencil makers seem to have solved the problem of producing pencils that are both durable and pleasant to write with. Or am I feeling things?
When the Space Race was young, NASA apparently spent millions in order to perfect a pen that would write in space (your ordinary, garden variety pen uses gravity to get the ink down from the container to the tip). Took mucho time and $$$, and they finally got it right…
Yup. About the only thing I use a pen for is writing checks, and it’s not like I do a lot of those, either. Anything non-official, though, is pencil. I think you’ll find this is typical of technical folks. And I still use the old-fashioned wooden ones, too, none of this newfangled mechanical nonsense.
Snopes has a thing or three to say about the space writing implement race. While there is a “space pen”, it wasn’t commissioned by NASA, and is now used by both countries. Oddly, I’ve met folks who use that story to prove American superiority over the USSR (?).
And my mark of distinction is in the heel of my right hand, opposite the thumb, from a fight in seventh grade.
I kept journals exclusively in pencil for many years, and have even written a few personal letters in pencil, which the recipients thought was somehow more intimate than ink.
As a professional musician, I need a pencil at every rehearsal. Never mark scores and parts up with ink. The same with scores in my library.
I agree that technical people tend to use pencils more often than others. I have found that a good quality lead in a mechanical pencil writes smoothly and cleanly, takes neater notes and draws much better diagrams. Throw in a good eraser (NEVER found on the end of a pencil, IMHO) and you have all you need. If you are stuck in a really boring meeting, you can at least entertain yourself by drawing amusing pictures of the speaker! (Gallery quality if time permits…but, take my advice here, sit in the back. )
I also usually prefer graph to lined paper…layouts are easier as is organization in general. I write letters in fountain pen on good stationery because it is just the right thing to do.
Mine was self-inflicted, too! I was “playing spaceship” with a pencil in 5th grade, where the pencil represented a rocket ship (due to its shape) and my left hand represented the surfaces of the various planets of the Solar system that the pencil/rocketship was whizzing past.
I crashed point-first into Neptune, and the little dark spot has been visible on the heel of my left hand just below the palm ever since.
All this talk about pencil tattoos has caused me to flash back to a really yucky trend in my junior high school years. It was all the rage (for a while, anyway) to write the name of your boyfriend on your upper thigh with a pencil…hard enough to break the skin. This was intended, I guess, to leave his name as a permanent scar on the skin. (Everyone who is still with their junior high sweetheart raise your hands…uh huh, just as I thought!) I never did this (I tried but it really hurt), so I am wondering if those classmates of mine are still cursed with the scars. Some of the girls even did this with ball point pens, not pushing into the skin, just drawing the lines over and over until the skin was open. Ick!:eek:
I’m one of those heavy-handed folks. In grade school, I was constantly making trips to the sharpener. Then I found mechanical pencils in Jr high, and it was a miracle. No more trips to the pencil sharpener, no more inconsistent line width, if the lead broke just advance a bit and keep writing. Used them all through college.
I mostly use pens now, but this is a habit from work, where most writing is filling in forms and signing them. Blue or black ink, no pencils. So I’ve adjusted to pens, and don’t worry about erasing. Though occassionally when I write letters they have scratched out spots from errors. I do actually have a couple mechanical pencils (and supplementary erasers) around, but rarely use them.
emjay said:
I try not to write on things I want to keep clean, pen or pencil. Maybe it’s just habit learned from childhood when I could never fully erase what I’d written. Wearing holes in your paper trying to erase an indentation is not good.
emjay said:
I try not to write on things I want to keep clean, pen or pencil. Maybe it’s just habit learned from childhood when I could never fully erase what I’d written. Wearing holes in your paper trying to erase an indentation is not good. **
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This is why the supplemental eraser is a must. The erasers that come with pencils BITE!. I make marginal notes, layout change ideas, and all sorts of other stuff on valuable materials, but, with the proper eraser they can be removed absolutely, without wearing the paper and without leaving any residual marks at all. The best erasers are white and come in a plastic cartridge that controls the length of exposed eraser.
Actually, I didn’t say that; Irishman did, but anyway . . .
Another great thing about writing with a pencil that hasn’t been mentioned here yet is that, even with the same #2 pencil, you can get a lot of variation from light to dark! I was never a heavy-hander; I instinctively vary the weight depending on how sure I am that it won’t need to be erased.
