By Ashley Wall, Editor-in-Chief
By Donald Halsing, Editorial Staff
While we live in a modern world of keyboard clicks, college students still scrawl scribbles across sheets of paper time and again.
But what tool is best to use for writing?
Traditional pencils and pens are frequent favorites among tiresome fingers. They’re reliable, easy to find in stores, and timeless.
Besides commonplace pens and pencils, there are also mechanical pencils and erasable pens.
Additionally, both come in a variety of colors and styles.
With so many options, each with their positive and negative components, one writing utensil must reign supreme.
To start, keeping a fresh point to draw with is important to keeping calculations and contentions clear.
Standard pencils must be sharpened, which is a hassle. Mechanical pencils, however, easily replenish their tips with writing material without the need to find a pencil sharpener.
However, some pencil lead is weak, and with strong hands, breakage is likely to occur, causing angered, bold words across the page.
Whatever is written by a writing utensil must be readable. Pens develop smooth, clear lines, and are more ergonomic to write with than pencils. Writing made with graphite pencils varies in darkness depending on how much pressure the user applies, which can be problematic.
Don’t forget about color. Both pens and pencils come in a variety of hues and shades.
While regular pencils make gray or black marks, colored pencils o:er some variety. However, colored pencils are also notoriously difficult to sharpen.
Pens come in a variety of colors, although blue or black is the default choice of professors.
Another important consideration is how long your notes will last. If your marks fade away, it’s unlikely you will get good marks in your class.
Pen can be easily smudged. But, once it dries, it is very difficult to modify.
Anyone with sweaty palms knows pencil often smears at the most inconvenient times of studying.
But what if you need to change something you wrote? Pencils usually include a small eraser on one end for correcting mistakes, but words written by pens are notoriously permanent.
What if there was a writing utensil with the permanence and clarity of a pen, but also with the flexibility of a pencil?
Erasable pens are the solution.
Erasable pens don’t need to be sharpened and produce clear, easy-to-read lines.
They also include the convenience of an eraser to quickly correct mistakes.
And, of course, erasable pens come in a full rainbow of colors!
For our left-handed writers: we see you. Erasable pens provide the perfect solution for those oh-so-unavoidable smudges.
So the next time you reach for your basic number two pencil, remember: erasable pens are the writing utensil of the future.