Comparing Writing Utensils

Sep 17, 2010 – Filed as: Productivity¹³

My experience using various kinds of writing utensils in school…

> = “is better than”

Don’t smudge ∴ Archive well
Force you to think about what you are writing
- Mistakes are more costly, since you cannot simply use an eraser on pen
Have brighter contrast ∴ Easier to read

Don’t need to be sharpened ∴
- No sawdust to clean up
- No special sharpener hardware needed
- Lifetime is not limited to a certain number of sharpenings
  - Lifetime only limited to when the m-pencil is lost
Seem to resist smearing in the short term
- (but pens still win in the long term)

Force you to think about what you are writing
- It takes a long time (comparatively) to write individual words, which gives you time to think about what you are writing
- Mistakes are more costly, since you cannot just delete words
Force you to think about the structure of what you are writing
- Mistakes are more costly, since you cannot just cut and paste sections which are poorly laid out in the first place
No mental overhead
- Using computers always incurs at least a small bit of mental overhead that interferes with the creative process
Automatic revision control (in the case of pen)
- It’s easier to strike through (rather than erase) rejected ideas with pen, so these ideas are preserved for future analysis, which sometimes comes in handy

Typing speed is much higher
- Gets even better if you use typing expansion software
- Gets even better if you use dictation software [for prose]
- Gets even better if you use a stenotype machine
Hyperlinks are easy to create and maintain
- This is especially powerful when writing reference documents