Pens vs. Pencils? Don’t Write Either Off

Which do you prefer, a pen or a pencil? Your preference may depend on your personality and personal style: eco-warriors and artists often love pencils, while top CEOs and big celebrities generally lean towards pens.

Let’s get to the point about the virtues of the pencil first:

• It’s made of natural substances- wood and graphite- and doesn’t hurt the environment. This makes it a perfect green writing solution.
• A good quality pencil costs less than a good quality pen- and you often get a free rubber attached to it.
• A pencil is more forgiving because pretty much all pencils are erasable and this encourages creativity
• You can produce better art work with a pencil as it allows you to shade and cross-hatch, and work with different tones.
• Pencils have a retro feel and bring back happy childhood memories for most people

Of course, other people prefer to use a pen, and here are some of the reasons:

• The tips don’t break so easily
• A good quality pen has an air of sophistication.
• You don’t need to sharpen the point or keep it in a special case
• The pen has a mighty reputation for bringing down empires: “the pen is mightier than the sword”

Pencils are generally quite low-tech compared to pens. However, only a dinosaur would think that the pencil is going extinct.

Pencil mogul Count Anton Wolfgang, who runs the Kaspar-Faber pencil company, summed up the pencil’s greatest advantage – endurance.

“When you are young, you put a pencil in a drawer. Then when you get to be very, very old, 100, and you want to give something of yours to your great, great grandchild, you pull that pencil out and it still writes. Can a pen do that?”