I just bought some new ballpoint pens. Yes, I know – Big Whoop! But hear me out. My new pens are a major shift in my pen-buying habits, and I am considering their effect on my pen-using habits. And I write this not so much for you, but for me – have I done the right (or write?) thing? Is my choice of a bold tip a finer thing than my longtime choice of fine tips? Click through and we will both find out together.

Why is a pen so important? My answer is that pens are how we express ourselves. We jot notes, fill out forms, and even occasionally write letters. OK, perhaps only those of us over the age of, well, let’s not go there. I will freely confess that I am one of those humans in that unnamed age demographic that relies on a pen for all of these tasks. And due to a recent purchase, I am in the midst of a drastic change in my penmanship.

Who remembers learning penmanship in grade school? I recall the great excitement when we, who had theretofore been restricted to No.2 pencils, were given pens to learn how to write IN INK. Writing “in ink” is still a thing in my mind, though I don’t know why because I have not picked up a pencil (No. 2 or otherwise) in eons. I think we began by writing cursive ovals between the lines in the paper (lines that were much closer together than before) and progressed to letters and words.

Did you know that the pen dates back to around 3000 B.C., when Egyptians used sharpened reeds to write on papyrus? I didn’t either until I just looked it up. By 100 B.C., the technology had advanced to sharpened quills (bird feathers).

Where it seems to have stalled for about the two millennia between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the U.S. Constitution. The one lesson I take here is that the finer point of the quill was seen as an upgrade from the coarser tip of the reed.

Some random Roman guy experimented with a metal tip pen in the days of Pompeii, but all he got for his trouble was a lava bath courtesy of Mt. Vesuvius. Possibly because the committee of Roman gods preferred reeds and quills. History proved them wrong because the metal-tipped fountain pen ruled from fairly early in the nineteenth century until halfway into the twentieth, when the ballpoint pen became a thing.

Did you know that the first patent for a ballpoint pen dates to 1888? Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?) there was not a decent one until a Hungarian named Laszlo Biro got an English patent in 1938. The secret to Biro’s design was an oil-based ink derived from the kind used by printers, which solved the leaking, skipping and smearing that had dogged earlier designs that used the water-based inks used by fountain pens. Biro’s design was first made in Argentina (as the Birome) and in England (the Biro), but not in large numbers.

An American named Milton Reynolds came across the Argentinian Birome and made enough changes to get his own patent in the U.S. Reynolds’ design was the first to sell in large numbers, beginning at Gimbel’s Department Store. That $12.45 Reynolds pen in 1945 would sell for about $225 today. After an initial burst of popularity, the ballpoint pen faded in the 1950’s. But a decade later, the Bic pen was developed (from the Biro patent) and the inexpensive ballpoint came to rule the pen world.

When I was growing up, ballpoint pens were all I knew. There was an old fountain pen nestled into a pod set in a marble base on my mother’s desk, but she never used it. I am unsure if she never used it because there was no ink or if there was no ink because she never used it. It is also possible that one of her small children ruined the tip when trying to scrawl some important note. But I admit nothing.

Through high school, Bic “crystal” ballpoints were the workhorse pens that got me through countless essays and filled innumerable spiral notebooks with jottings necessary to get me through the periodic tests. I never paid any attention to them, but can now tell you that the French pens were introduced to the U.S. in 1959 for 29 cents (about $3.20 today) with the slogan “Writes first time, every time.” I had no idea the Bic ballpoint was such a recent thing and certainly did not think about alternatives.

Actually, I did develop one preference as I got a little older – I liked fine-point pens. These went well with the “college ruled” notebooks I preferred. I, you see, physically write in a very compact way. There are those whose pens blather all over the paper with all the finesse of a hippo. A real hippo, not the elegant cartoon version that wore ballet slippers. My writing looks more like that of an engineer, with small, somewhat angular letters made by half printing with some cursive flourishes where necessary to speed things along. Narrow lines and a fine-point pen made for just the kind of economy in paper usage that an engineer would appreciate. A nearsighted engineer, at least.

It might have been as a high school graduation present that I got my first fountain pen. Or maybe I decided to buy it for myself. It was a Sheaffer No Nonsense pen – a model that I now know dated to 1969 and was styled to mimic a design from the 1920’s. Instead of the old designs that sucked ink from a jar into an ink chamber, this one used easily changed plastic cartridges. My black Sheaffer pen (filled with “blue-black” ink) was my go-to for years, all the way through law school and into my legal career.

I loved the way that fountain pen wrote. It was not as fine as the fine point ballpoints I used as a backup, and the mechanics of my writing style changed a little to accommodate the way the pen worked. But I loved it for the way it made writing feel like an elegant craft. Right up until the day a new package of ink cartridges arrived from the office supply store. They did not fit into the pen quite the same and leaked. A comparison between new and old showed very slight changes in dimension, and a comparison of the boxes showed a new country of manufacture.

It took awhile of casting through random pens, but I finally found my new happy place in a Pentel EnerGel fine-tip pen. It had the separate cap like my old Sheaffer and its writing action was an almost perfect cross between a scratchy fountain pen and a smooth ballpoint with a teeny, precision tip. Everyone who borrowed it loved it, and my daughter took to adopting as many of them from my stash as she could lay her hands on.

You will note that I never had a thing for expensive pens. I used Cross pens for awhile in the 80’s (when I needed a ballpoint), but would routinely lose them. I wondered if buying myself a gold one instead of the chrome-plated ones I had been using would make me more careful. But nope, I lost that one too. Was it just so much smaller than my big, manly Sheaffer fountain pen? Was the lack of a screw-on cap something that made pen use so mindless and forgettable that I started routinely forgetting to put it back in my shirt pocket? We will never know.

I retired from a life where those pens helped me earn my living, but I was sure to keep a bunch of my preferred Pentels in my desk at home, where they have remained my favorite pens. But in my new life, there is a problem.

My work day now involves filling out and signing paperwork for loads that I carry (whether in or out) between a large manufacturing company and some area distribution warehouses. Often, this paperwork must be filled out in sub-optimal weather conditions. And I have discovered that my favored EnerGels run and smear like fountain pens of old when the paper gets wet, as happens more commonly than I would like. Also, a separate cap spends a lot of time in my mouth as I fill out paperwork.

After a period of scrounging free pens from my bank, I decided that a more reliable supply was necessary. A recent trip to the store landed me a pack of four Paper Mate Profile pens. I may not have read the package carefully enough, because these boast of a “bold” tip of 1.4 mm (compared to the .5 mm tip of my Energel). Did I overdo? My first impression is that these feel a bit like writing with a crayon, or maybe a dull pencil. And as a consequence, my printing is much larger than it was. Perhaps, though, my printing needed to be larger.

And large it is! Now I can do a genuine scrawl, with that most American of attitudes, in which there will never, ever be a need to conserve either paper or ink. This thing glides across the paper like it was the Buick of pens. I may not love Buicks, but for the present I kind of need a Buick of pens. So for now, I will continue to (to paraphrase Martin Luther) go forth and sign boldly.