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From: Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: National Pencil Day (30 March)
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2024 17:09:28 +0100
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 Ar an triú lá de mí Aibreán, scríobh Athel Cornish-Bowden: 

 > On 2024-04-02 20:23:53 +0000, Ross Clark said:
 > 
 > > [...] (1) I like pencils. I rejoice when I find one, among the heaps of
 > > dead and dying ballpoint pens,
 > 
 > I'm the reverse. We have masses of pencils that I never want to use, but if
 > I want a ballpoint that works I can't find one. From time to time I buy a
 > set of four at the supermarket and within a short time they all go wherever
 > ballpoints go. I have a fountain pen that I used during the early days of
 > Covid, but I haven't used it for a long time -- getting too old, 81 today.

I enthusiastically recommend gel pens. Less force needed to write than with the
usual ballpoint, less messy than fountain pens. I tend to buy 100 Pentel
Energel pens and three times that many refills at a time, but then they’re a
legitimate business expense, you may not need to be that ridiculous. And when
they die, it’s a short lived affair, so the motivation to swap out the refill
immediately is fairly immediate and strong.

-- 
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)