So you're sitting in math class in high school, first day of school. The teacher tells you that you must submit your work in pencil. That's fine, you smirk, with a sly smile, knowing that you had prepared for this moment. Oh, yes, you are a veteran, and you have not just regular pencils, but also their mechanical counterparts, and one of these. Nothing can hold you back now, right?

Wrong! It is perhaps the mathematician's lament that pencils are so often pressed upon him dogmatically. Pens, they say, cannot be erased and are thus are literally Hitler.

We shall now document the woeful account of the standard grind 'em up beauties.

Lack of consistency. Either you get super thin precise lines or super fat lines, and the sweet spot in the middle is just too difficult to maintain.

SNAP! Uh oh, it broke, and now you have to use up quite a bit more to resharpen it (and get up to go to the sharpener again). And after it gets sharpened too many times it's trash. Or you can try to hold onto a pencil half the size of your finger (hand cramps incoming!).

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Well, surely our mechanical friends correct these problems and grant us great erasure, yes? No! They suffer from similar problems.

A quarter of each piece of lead is useless, and must be thrown away. Which also means if one of your pieces of lead is snapped in half, its total life got cut by half, ouch.

Click once lead is too short, click twice lead is too long.

Oh, and that your lead can snap off and form a point, and then you're really screwed.

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But despite all of these problems it's worth it, right, because you can erase. Yes and no. You can erase, but we all know from experience that this isn't a perfect process. Erase something once, and you can get away with it, but stuck on a hard problem in math and this is what you're left with: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltbo8blvM41qmyny3o1_500.jpg.

Congrats.

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So we return to our evil pal the pen. I used to tout pencils, but I switched soon thereafter, because pens are grossly superior. It has consistent writing, doesn't require reloading often, and won't smear after a minute has passed. The only negative is that you can't erase, which is just fine if you're not being dumb. Screw up on a page long problem? Get out a new page (you'd have to anyway if you were using pencil anyway). Screw up a line? Single line strikeout or diagonal strikeouts are clean, easy to read, and work out just fine.

So please, put down your pencils, and pick up ink. For the children.

Started using a regular pencil again when I needed math at uni this autumn and I do prefer it now. Just have to get a high quality pencil and you're good ;D Mine hasn't broken once yet.

Quit buying your pencils in a bag of a dozen like a girl and get a real man's pencil. Like this:
http://www.jetpens.com/Staedtler-925-65-Drafting-Pencil-0.9-mm/pd/6898

These are fantastic, I use exactly these.

What is breaking your lead? I accidentally bought .5mm pencils once and snapped those all the time because I use too much pressure, but I haven't broken any .7mm pencil leads in years.

When you choose a mechanical pencil that adjusted via clicking, you are already dead. Enter the world of turning the end of the mechanical pencil for precision length. (Since we're in a topic about pencils, anybody know a good refillable twist-end mechanical pencil? The ones I linked to are disposable.)

Rotate the pencil to respect the geometry of the lead. Even when I've formed a point, I haven't torn any pages or damaged anything with it.

As you stated, with pen you will have to take a new page anyway. As a matter of keeping things to look professional, it would be better to do your rough work on seperate sheets of paper before writing the copy you plan to turn in or show to others. Then if you mess up, you will only have to erase once or twice. If you are not getting at least a couple of rewrites before this happens, your pencil and/or eraser suck.

Also, an advantage of pencil is that lead won't run if your work happens to get submerged in water or spilled on.

That being said, I really do like pens, too. They are fine for doing work and ink will generally last longer than a pencil lead. Strikethroughs do work just fine. I never saw either writing implement as superior to the other as they each have uses. My typical loadout includes both mechanical pencils and pens of at least five colors.

Here's my exact mechanical pencil type. .5mm lead. Uniquely thin, even when "fat" because I write at the same angle consistently, so if I manage to forget to write my name or something is collected it can be traced back to me easily.



Oh, and it has an eraser inside.

I like both.

(Poison should change his title because the only true necromancer was devilesk. Poser.)

I'm sorry, but I'm the best you've got. Evildesk is not only gone, but a higher power than I am.

/thread

Liquid Pencil?! By Sharpie?!

I'll take eight!

EDIT: nevermind, it looks like it tanked.