The best pens?

The New York Times Wirecutter offers recommendations for the best ballpoint, rollerball, and gel pens.

I like the Parker Jotter, the Papermate InkJoy, and the Uni-ball Signo RT. The last two go unmentioned in the Times. But I’d rather be using a fountain pen, Pelikan or Kaweco, with Aurora black ink.

Related reading
All OCA pen posts (Pinboard)

“No Cap!”’

[Life, June 10, 1946. Click for a larger view.]

After reading a BBC history of the ballpoint pen, I had to go looking for Reynolds. All I can say is that the claim of a four- to fifteen-year supply of ink fills me with existential dread. Notice (bottom left) that the pen is gendered — not unusual in the twentieth century.

The Reynolds name is still around, as an Indian brand owned by Newell Brands. And look closely: the Reynolds Xpres-Dri gel pen appear to be a Paper Mate Ink Joy with slightly different packaging. The tell-tale Paper Mate hearts remain. Newell owns Paper Mate too.

Related reading
All OCA pen posts (Pinboard) : Photographs of the Reynolds 400

[Gendered pens: among others, the Parker Compact Jotter (“for girl-size hands”), the Parker Lady Duofold, the Lady Sheaffer, the Sheaffer PFM (Pen for Men).]

Almodóvar Noris

[Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2019). Click for a larger view.]

Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is using a Staedtler Noris to mark a passage in a Spanish translation of Fernando Pessoa’s Livro do Desassossego [The book of disquiet]. Here’s the English translation provided in the subtitles:

Life disgusts me as a useless medicine. It is then when I clearly feel how easy it would be to get away from this tediousness if I had the simple strength to want to really push it away.

Here, in Spanish, is a commentary on the books Mallo reads in the film. And here is Google Translate’s best shot at a translation into English, one that turns “acotaciones a lápiz” into “pencil dimensions.” DeepL does a better job (“pencil marks”) if you’re willing to copy and paste the Spanish text in two parts.

And while I’m thinking about stationery, here are some more Almodóvar items: another Noris, a Parker T-Ball Jotter, and an array of notebooks.

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All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Nadler’s Jotter

The New York Times has an array of photographs online, “Inside the Private Moments of Impeachment.” Among those (semi-private?) moments: Representative Jerrold Nadler (D, New York-10) signing draft articles of impeachment with a Parker T-Ball Jotter. Go to the Times the full photograph.

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Other Parker T-Ball Jotter posts

Still life in red and green

[Sólo con tu pareja (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 1991). Click for a larger view.]

The red pen must be a Parker T-Ball Jotter. The pencil with the red stripe: almost certainly a Berol Mirado. Placing the thermometer with the writing instruments is a beautiful touch.

Here and everywhere, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography adds an element of deep thoughtfulness to what seems at first glance to be a light sex comedy.

An Almodóvar Jotter

[Matador (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1986. Click for a much larger view.]

The police commissioner (Eusebio Poncela) holds a Parker T-Ball Jotter. I’ve also noticed Parker T-Ball Jotters in Homicide, Populaire, and Shattered Glass.

The Parker T-Ball Jotter is my favorite ballpoint pen. Stop me before I notice again!

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
A 1963 ad : Another 1963 ad : A 1964 ad : A 1971 ad : My life in five pens : Thomas Merton, T-Ball Jotter user

T-Ball Jotter sighting

[“Young voice.” From Shattered Glass (dir. Billy Ray, 2003). Click for larger handwriting.]

A journalist should be making notes during a telephone conversation, no? Document everything.

I’ve also noticed Parker T-Ball Jotters in Homicide and Populaire. I can’t help it.

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
A 1963 ad : Another 1963 ad : A 1964 ad : A 1971 ad : My life in five pens : Thomas Merton, T-Ball Jotter user

Biro’s birthday

[Google Doodle, September 29, 2016.]

As The Crow pointed out in a comment this morning, today is the birthday of László Bíró, later Ladislao José Biro (1899–1985), the creator of the ballpoint pen. Thus today’s Google Doodle. The name Biro is still Britspeak for a ballpoint.

I much prefer to write with a fountain pen, but I have no hostility toward the ballpoint, and I think that reports of its role in the decline of handwriting have been greatly exaggerated. (All I have to do is think of my parents’ beautiful ballpoint handwriting.) My favorite ballpoint is the Parker T-Ball Jotter.

Thanks, Martha, for the heads up.

Related reading
All OCA pen posts (Pinboard)

Parker Jotter sighting

[Populaire (dir. Régis Roinsard, 2012). Click for a much larger view.]

I know: Populaire means typewriters . But that’s a Parker Jotter. Attention must be paid.

The Jotter was introduced in 1954. The metal tip at the end of the barrel was added in 1955. The T-Ball came along in 1957; the arrow clip, in 1958. History courtesy of this page. Populaire is set in 1958 and 1959.

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
Five pens (My life in five pens)
Last-minute shopping (1964 Jotter ad)
“Make My Jotter Quit!” (1971 Jotter ad)
“The Reliable Parker Jotter” (1963 Jotter ad)
Thomas Merton, T-Ball Jotter user
Watch, lighter, pen (1963 Jotter ad)

“The Reliable Parker Jotter”

[Life , March 22, 1963. Click for a larger view.]

I like this advertisement, mainly because I like the Parker T-Ball Jotter, but also because I have done what Mrs. Beatrice Sopot did, albeit with cold water and without bleach. The Jotter and the shirt came through undamaged.

The Jotter was my first real (non-disposable) pen. I started using one again in 2012. It’s my favorite (and only) ballpoint.

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
Five pens (My life in five pens)
Last-minute shopping (1964 Jotter ad)
“Make My Jotter Quit!” (1971 Jotter ad)
Thomas Merton, T-Ball Jotter user
Watch, lighter, pen (1963 Jotter ad)

Pocket notebook sighting

[The sentence in progress: “She had a fortune in her basement.” Click either image for a larger view.]

This pocket notebook belongs to Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna), a homicide detective in Homicide (dir. David Mamet, 1991). The notebook is a homemade affair, a spiral-bound pad in a (faux?) alligator holder. The pen is a Parker T-Ball Jotter.

I like the near-realism of the telephone number: 557 , not 555 .

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Lodger : Murder at the Vanities : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Thomas Merton, T-Ball Jotter user

[Detail of a photograph by John Howard Griffin.]

That’s a Parker T-Ball Jotter in Thomas Merton’s hand, no question. The photograph is here. And there’s another, also by Griffin, here.

Related reading
All OCA Thomas Merton posts (Pinboard)
A 1963 Jotter ad
A 1964 Jotter ad
Five pens
“Make My Jotter Quit!”

[You don’t have to be Catholic or Christian or even a theist to love Thomas Merton.]

Ballpoints, not for writing?

Caught during the “Breaking Barriers” episode of the PBS series Pioneers of Television, Tom Willis (Franklin Cover) of The Jeffersons speaking to his wife Helen (played by Roxie Roker):

“Helen, I can’t find my fountain pen.”

“Use one of the ballpoint pens. There are lots of them on your desk.”

“Ballpoint pens are not for writing. They’re for making marks. I need a pen with a point. Now what have you done with my pen?”

“I don’t know, I might have taken it to do the marketing list.”

“You wrote with it?”

Some ballpoints are a pleasure to write with: writing with, say, a Parker T-Ball Jotter is a breeze. But I understand where Mr. Willis is, as they say, coming from. The clip begins at 47:33.

Related reading
A 1963 Jotter ad : A 1964 Jotter ad : A 1971 Jotter ad : Five pens

Pilot Razor Points

Looking at supplies in an Office Max this past weekend, I was surprised to see that the Pilot Razor Point is now an object of nostalgia: “The Yellow Cap Original,” the package says, “Since 1974.” Pilot Razor Points served me well through college and some of grad school. I haven’t used one in years, but I had to buy a four-pack.

The only difference in design that I notice: the yellow top now has a deep well with a hole in its side (lessening the danger of suffocation if the cap is inhaled or swallowed). The pen has the same shiny barrel, the same plastic point, the same thin dark line. Using fountain pens for years makes me realize how light this pen is — too light, really. But I’m enjoying the opportunity to commune with my disposable past.

I have no idea when I bought the single Razor Point in the photograph. This pen, stashed away in a drawer, goes back to the time when Wal-Mart items carried price stickers.

If you like this post, you should read this one: Five pens. It’s the story of my life in five pens: a Parker Jotter, a no-name ballpoint, the Uni-Ball, a Mont Blanc, and a Pelikan. There’s also “a long blur of Bics, Flairs, and Pilot Razor Points.”

“Make My Jotter Quit!”

If I didn’t already have several Jotters around, this advertisement would inspire me to buy one, no joke. Charles Newman was right, and remains right: a Jotter refill lasts a long time. How long? As yet I do not know: my black and blue Jotters still have their original cartridges. But given this circumstance, this as-yet-unknowing, it is appropriate to ask: are these “original” cartridges themselves refills? And if so, of what? Which is to ask: what is the nature of the now-lost plenitude that they attempt to re-fill? And the Jotter in my hand: was it itself a pen as such before it came to possess a point? These questions take us to the boundary, beyond which we cannot proceed. Yet if we remain on this side of that line, it is nonetheless permissible to ask: how does one tell the difference between the so-called refill and the cartridge whose place the refill takes, the “original” cartridge, the pen’s “point,” as it were, imperial, serene, solitary, or so it would seem, yet always to be displaced by a New-man, an identical impostor, one in a series of impostors, each claiming the work of inscription as its own? We “miss the point,” we say, but the point at the same time misses us, eluding our grasp, leaving us to scrape and scratch like an inferior writing instrument — some not-Jotter — against metaphysics’ corrasable bond. [Translated from the imaginary French.]

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
Five pens
Last-minute shopping (A 1964 ad)
Parker T-Ball Jotter (A 1963 ad)

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Eaton’s Corrasable Bond

[Advertisement from Life, August 27, 1971.]

Last-minute shopping

Says the advertisement, “Just five minutes at a Parker Jotter counter can take a surprising amount of guesswork and expense and time out of your Christmas shopping.”

“Parker Jotter counter”: noun phrase of a lost world.


[Life, December 24, 1964. Click for a larger view.]

The Parker T-Ball Jotter is an especially good value if you have a working time-machine. The pen that sold for $1.98 in 1964 sells for $6 or $7 or so today. Today’s prices are good ones too: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator turns 1964’s $1.98 into 2012’s $14.70.

Related posts
Parker T-Ball Jotter, 1963
Ten best “dowdy world” gifts

[The typeface in the headline? Goudy Old Style. Notice the diamond-shaped tittle on the lowercase i.]

Turabian, fourth edition

[Click for larger views.]

The fourth edition of the University of Chicago Press’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations appeared in 1973. This copy (thirteenth printing) is from 1979. Writers of the era used the tools depicted on the book’s front and back covers to create written documents by making marks on thin sheets of a material called “paper” and fastening the sheets together.

Notice the use of tightly spaced Helvetica. In a comment on a 2011 post about Arthur Plotnik’s The Elements of Editing, Daughter Number Three pointed out that such spacing was once popular. Notice too the Parker T-Ball Jotter and the typeballs. The small object at the bottom left of the front cover is a typewriter key. The one above it: no idea.

The covers are what have made me hold on to this book through the years.

Related posts
A Manual for Writers of Dissertations
Parker T-Ball Jotter, 1963

Parker T-Ball Jotter, 1963

[Life, September 27, 1963. Click for a larger view.]

The Parker T-Ball Jotter is the first pen I remember using with pleasure, back in childhood. Yes, I was precocious, in some ways if not others.

I have been writing for a month now with another Jotter, one that long stood unused in a cup of pencils and pens near my desk. It’s an excellent ballpoint, and a perfect pen for writing comments on student writing: the T-Ball (T for tungsten) has just enough tooth to slow the pen down a bit and give my hand a measure of control. Neatness counts, especially when more and more students have difficulty reading anybody’s handwriting. What I most like about the pen though is that its design is virtually identical to that of my childhood Jotter.

This 1963 Life advertisement recalls a gone world, when everyone wore a watch and close to half of American adults smoked cigarettes. (The Report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health would be published on January 11, 1964.) I’m amused to see that despite the association of the Jotter with grown-up stuff, Parker was also selling to the young. Perhaps my first Jotter come from a Doodle Depot.



Related posts
Five pens (Jotter, no-name, Uni-Ball, Mont Blanc, Pelikan)
Last-minute shopping (1964 Jotter ad)

Five pens

1
A Parker T-Ball Jotter: the first pen I remember using with pleasure, probably in the fourth grade. The pen was made of stainless steel and grey plastic. The neutral tones blended nicely with the graphite-smeary interior of the pencil case at the front of my loose-leaf. At some point the grey plastic developed a crack that filled with blue ink.

Ink: the Jotter's was gummy and sweetly fragrant. I wish that it were available to the nose as well as to memory.

This pen must have come from the OK Bookshop, the source of all school supplies, a corner paperbacks and stationery store on New Utrecht Avenue, Borough Park, Brooklyn, under the El tracks. The owner of the store sat at a desk in a small alcove. He used a device on his shoulder that allowed him to talk on the telephone hands-free. My mother once checked with him — or with someone else who worked there — about whether Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels were "appropriate" for readers my age. (They were.) Ian Fleming's work no doubt put that worrisome question in her head.

As a boy, I must have liked this pen's multi-sectioned name. "Hey, Mike, what kind of a pen is that?" "It's a Parker T-Ball Jotter." Like "United States of America" or "John Fitzgerald Kennedy."

2
A variety-store ball-point pen, transparent red plastic with a white push-button mechanism. Push the plunger down and the point appears. Press the little button on the side of the pen and the point retracts. I cannot remember writing with this pen, but I remember using it as a walkie-talkie one night while spying in a Robert Hall clothing store in Brooklyn. (The rest of the family was shopping.) Espionage and cryptography were major factors in my childhood, which drew considerable inspiration from U.N.C.L.E. and Clifford Hicks' novel Alvin's Secret Code.

[Lost years: a long blur of Bics, Flairs, and Pilot Razor Points.]

3
The Faber-Castell Uni-Ball: I wrote my dissertation with it, or them. Many Uni-Balls!

The Uni-Ball was part of a work routine that I remember as strangely pleasant. I wrote in longhand on legal-sized pads with a Boston University Law School imprint. These pads had an enormous left margin, great for endnotes and revision by accretion. (I've never seen such pads since, though I know they're still around.) Every weekday, I'd write, then type (first on an Olympia manual, later on a Panasonic electronic typewriter). In the afternoon I'd walk to a photocopy shop in the Coolidge Corner Arcade (Brookline, MA) and get my typescript copied before editing. I often added a trip to Beacon Stationery to buy envelopes, folders, and another Uni-Ball or two.

The matte black plastic, the flat clip, the funny notches at the top of the cap: all features of a simple, beautiful design. For a long time, the Uni-Ball meant "writing."

4
"Please don't get me a fountain pen": I remember telling my wife Elaine that while disserting. Yes, she was thinking about a present to celebrate the end. I'm not sure how it is that fountain pens were in the air. Elaine wrote with one — an inexpensive Geha with an incredibly smooth nib. I'm guessing that my pleasure in trying the Geha made a fountain pen an obvious choice.

The pen that Elaine gave me was a Montblanc of Uni-Ball-like simplicity, made of stainless steel, not "precious resin." It was, of course, just what I needed. I wrote with it through my first years of teaching and turned into a serious fountain-pen fan, switching early on from cartridges to bottled ink (the hard stuff). And then the grippers inside the slip-on cap began to lose their grip, and a shirt pocket turned black, and it was time to put the pen in its case and find another.

5
I had no idea how complicated finding another fountain pen would prove. I started with a Sheaffer that refused to dispense ink. (I knew nothing about cleaning a pen, nor did the people at the office-supply store, who just gave me a refund.) Getting a pen turned into getting pens, all relatively modest, before I found what has become my everyday writer, a Pelikan, purchased in the summer of 1998. This pen has green stripes, a fine nib, and takes bottled ink. It has never leaked or failed to write. Its maintenance has involved nothing more than an occasional flushing with water and — just twice — a dab of silicone paste to keep the piston moving freely.

My Pelikan has taught me to think about price in relation to use: this pen has turned out to be a much less expensive proposition than, say, a ten-year supply of Uni-Balls. Since 1998, virtually everything of any length that I've written, I've written with this pen (including the draft of this post).

Thank you, Elaine, for not listening to me, all the way back in Brookline.

Happy National Handwriting Day to all.

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National Handwriting Day