We Sent Ralph Nader Some of Our Favorite Pens. He Dismissed Them All.

May 4, 2024 8:17 AM

Ralph Nader is loyal to one pen: the Papermate Flair. But Nader claims that the pens are drying out quicker then they used to. He reached out to Wirecutter (a NYT property) and they investigated. Archive.is link: https://archive.is/54jtw

“For years I’ve been using felt pens, mostly red and black but sometimes purple, to mark up The New York Times,” Nader told me in a phone interview last year. “I go through every page of the Times, and I mark up different articles and send them to different people. And I do that with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.”

(I am aware that once I click "Post" I cede control of this article, but if this could become a fun conversation about pens and not the umpteenth rehash of past presidential campaigns, I'd love it.)

posted by kimberussell (62 comments total)

My husband is a teacher who has used Papermate Flair pens to grade work for years, and he corroborates Nader's account of the pens' decline in quality.

And is this post the GenX equivalent of me cutting an article out of the paper and sending it to a friend?
posted by kimberussell at 8:21 AM on May 4 [19 favorites]

At least none of the pens exploded.
posted by whatevernot at 8:22 AM on May 4 [10 favorites]

My favorite pen is the Uni-ball 207 gel pen. It dries fairly quickly (good for us lefties). I usually end up fiddling with the "hook" part and that invariably breaks before it runs out of ink.
posted by tclark at 8:22 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]

Lynda Barry suggests Papermate Flair pens as a good "general purpose" pen to her students in Syllabus, so when I was following along with the book I became a fan of them too. I will say though that through rigorous scientific inquiry (buying a bunch of pens during Covid) I've moved on to two other pens to do my cartooning - a Micron Graphic 1 and a Pentel Sign Brush, both of which I buy by the box because I have become the kind of person that has an opinion on pens.
posted by gee_the_riot at 8:26 AM on May 4 [11 favorites]

I used to hate the Papermate for its hard tip, which made writing with it feel like you were scrawling in soy sauce with an old nail. When I was working at a place that was team Papermate I would snip the end off the offending tip so that the ink would flow more freely. And then, my gripe was apparently recognized and they redesigned the tip to be softer and more flow-y, although by this 'point' the G8 was on the scene and the Papermate seemed like a relic from the 1900s (apart from the red one, the luminous ink of which is sublime and perfect for marking up drawings). So, I did note an increase in the Papermate's quality but never stuck around to notice if it declined.
posted by Flashman at 8:30 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

I use the Papermate Flair for grading and have found that they dry out more quickly than they used to. I had one in hand already (I've been grading all morning, happy finals week) when I saw this post.

I also reject all the pens Nader rejected, at least for grading purposes. I'm happiest with something that can write at any angle and doesn't require any pressure to write (for general hand comfort, ease of writing on a stack of papers precariously balanced on my lap instead of on a reasonable flat surface, no left-handed smear issues, etc.)
posted by erolls at 8:33 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]

My go-to is a black Pilot G2 (0.5 mm, although I’ve been exploring the 0.7 mm and am on a more general pen-experimentation kick lately).

tclark, Uni-ball makes some pens with spring-loaded hook thingies, would these be more fidget-friendly?
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 8:34 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

I love and appreciate the people who have opinions on different specific pens and the like because on the rare occasion that I use pens I am universally, unequivocally, grabbing whatever random conference pen is closest on hand and praying to god it doesn’t randomly die in the middle of my sentence.

One time told a fountain pen person that I had probably used a pen twice in the past month and I think I watched her soul shrivel up and die. I’m sorry, I’m either in front of a computer or the thought goes to God because no scrap of paper is making it from one room to another with me.
posted by brook horse at 8:35 AM on May 4 [15 favorites]

I was hoping Nader came with some actual metrics about the quality decline! Where are my charts, Ralph?! I see not a single number in this piece about how these pens supposedly dry out more quickly. It seems possible to me that the cap-fit issue and the longevity issue may be related but I wanted to see the data. Without it, this felt like an "old man thinks everything was better in the past" article.
posted by potrzebie at 8:35 AM on May 4 [12 favorites]

This was a fun twist on the usual Wirecutter format! I like the idea of sending the list of recommendations to a third person who already has opinions on the category.

Myself, I've never used the Flair, but I'm not really a felt-tip person; I go for ball pens with some kind of gel ink. For a long time I used the classic Pilot G-2 until I discovered my current favorite, the Sarasa Dry gel pen. Smooth writing with great ink that dries almost instantly. You have to work to smudge with these pens. And as an extra bonus, the clip is a separate piece on a little spring, so it doesn't suffer from material fatigue and snap off, the way the clips do when they're molded out of the same piece of plastic as the rest of the pen or cap.

Honorable mention to the Pilot Frixion Ball if you need something erasable. They're a world ahead of the "erasable" pens of my childhood. The ink is temperature sensitive and goes transparent in response to heat -- like reverse invisible ink -- and the "eraser" is just a little plastic nub with enough texture to heat up the paper when you rub it. It erases better than the average pencil, really.
posted by egregious theorem at 8:35 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]

would these be more fidget-friendly?

I'd probably still end up bending the springs. I'm not normally a fidgeter kind of person but put a pen in my hand and I'm always bending the hook a bit.
posted by tclark at 8:36 AM on May 4

I was a kid, deeply into drawing, when Flairs came out and, man, were they a big deal to me. I spent hours and hours in my room, quietly drawing all manner of images with those things. I had a large pencil box filled with them, in every color I could find (which numbered in the multiple dozens, at least, back then.)

And then I discovered the Rapidiograph, and my world changed once again.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:36 AM on May 4 [8 favorites]

There’s a comment in the OP from someone citing two observable and possibly relevant changes to the Flair.

I didn’t know there were that many refillable not-fountain-pens, nice!. I remember technical pens clogging up too easily even when I wrote more by hand — have they improved in the last several decades?
posted by clew at 8:37 AM on May 4

Someone commented that he may be writing slower as he gets older and leaving the caps off longer.

But other people confirm the issue, and I wonder if the pens are the same but something about the distribution channels has changed, and the pens are sitting longer and drying out a bit before he buys them. Maybe his local store orders a case of pens every six months instead of every month, or whatever, because so many people have switched to Word comments and notes apps.
posted by smelendez at 8:50 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Uni Jetstream 0.7mm. Writes as smooth as a gel pen but the ink doesn't smear like a gel pen.
posted by tommasz at 8:55 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]

For me it's fountain pens and if they fail then a Dixon Ticonderoga 2 and 5/10s pencil
posted by chavenet at 9:01 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

There seems to be an across the board decline over at the old PaperMate HQ, or as Adam Savage put it, they are "Incheapening the product to increasining the profit”.

This from a recently posted 16 minute (!) video detailing in excruciating detail the latest version of his longtime favorite pencil (the PaperMate Sharpwriter #2) the incheapening of which makes him really sad.
posted by jeremias at 9:11 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]

Another possibility is that the New York Times contains more things that one would want to mark up with a pen than it used to.
posted by joeyh at 9:14 AM on May 4 [15 favorites]

ctl f "montblanc" 0 results.

they didn't even try. (send me one, I'll make it my favorite pen!!!)
posted by supermedusa at 9:25 AM on May 4

The pens never changed.

It's you, Ralph, who have changed.

You changed.

especias secreto
posted by flabdablet at 9:30 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

i feel like everyone is focusing on pens and somehow ignoring that he goes through 3 major newspapers to 'mark up' articles to 'send' to 'different people.'

is... is this something i didn't learn about being an adult where, as part of your day, you're just expected to go over the print news and add your personal take on it for the benefit of. . . someone? like, this NYT article on the intersection of trans rights and campus protests was pretty good but i bet. . . <flips through rolodex> Dave wants ol' Ralphy's perspective on it. he does know these people personally, right? right?

what does marking an article up consist of? off-the-cuff reactions? margin notes? cross-references to other articles? obscene doodles?

and 'sending'. i hope, i hope, he is actually cutting the articles out of the paper, putting them in an envelope, and posting them through the U.S. Mail because the alternative where he takes an out-of-focus picture with his phone, connects the phone to his laptop with a usb cord, opens up the desktop version of Outlook and attaches the jpg to a perfectly formatted email with salutation, body, and signature is just too horrible to contemplate.
posted by logicpunk at 9:31 AM on May 4 [23 favorites]

i hope, he is actually cutting the articles out of the paper

Presumably, he bought his favorite pair of scissors in 1965 and has so far been able to get it sharpened as needed.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:38 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Yeah OK, but can Ralph twiddle the pen around its axis in his hand, like that one cool kid in high school could do? DIDN'T THINK SO!
posted by slater at 9:44 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

i hope, i hope, he is actually cutting the articles out of the paper, putting them in an envelope, and posting them through the U.S. Mail

I hope he's opening up his window and yelling "you there, boy!" at various street urchins, offering them a shilling to run this very important document over to a respectable gentleman on 39th Street.

I paused trying to figure out what he was doing at that description in the article as well, and I just figured he's reading the paper in dead tree form at his leisure in a comfy chair, and then eventually goes to a computer and finds the articles online and sends them to people.
posted by LionIndex at 9:44 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Metafilter is a whole lot like marking up articles for the putative benefit of our friends…
posted by clew at 9:50 AM on May 4 [19 favorites]

Yes, there is a segment of the population that cuts articles out to share them with people. It’s not a trivial number of people, based on conversations with friends and colleagues. It’s not just The Olds, either, or at least not just The Elderlies.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:54 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]

Pentel Energel (metal tip) or nothing, for me.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:54 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]

Lord y’all do you not have grandparents or great grands? Nader is right about my late parents’ age (90), and this is a thing that pmuch everybody of their generation and the one before would do: read the paper, clip out articles they think would interest you, write a few comments on it (including “saw this and thought of you!”), stick in envelope, stick on forever stamp that you subscribe a supply of, and clip it to the mailbox on your porch, hours before the mailman comes.
posted by toodleydoodley at 9:55 AM on May 4 [21 favorites]

I like the idea that Nader knows, like, dozens of people who he presumes could make regular use of his insights on newspaper article topics scrawled in the margins. Do you think these people actually read what he sends them? OR is it a case of directly to file 13?
posted by axiom at 9:57 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

This is very much an old man yells at cloud kind of article. I'm impressed that they committed fully to the bit.

Anyway. I have one of those refillable copic multiliners that must be almost 20 years old. It has whatever thier largest nib was. I want to say 0.8 mm, but it looks like they come in 0.7 max, so maybe I'm misremembering. All the markings have flaked off, and there is corrosion on the nib. It still writes, though, in spite of two decades of pressing hard, and multiple refills with wrong and likely incompatible inks, so that's good. 10/10 would probably buy something different next time because there are a lot of pens, and twenty years is a long time to go without a change.
posted by surlyben at 10:08 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]

Whenever I see a corporate response these days my brain just shuts off and I skip to the next sentence. I know it will be a word salad of nothing and is a waste of energy to read it.
I used to have to write a lot of stuff when I worked...forms to fill out, items that had to be filed for saved records, etc. And, there wasn't a lot of time. You had to do it now. (Ages ago, children: we used to have to Write Things Down Uphill Both Ways! This is around 1979...) The place where I worked used the world's cheapest "stick ballpoint". Then one day, a nice person handed me a Pentel "Rolling Writer Rollerball" and I never went back to the stick. Management scowled at "my pen". Co-workers scorned me. Then...suddenly...people started swiping my Pentels! I went out and bought a box and just let people steal them until.....even management started using them. I had several of the nicer aluminum refillable RollerBalls. I moved on from RollerBalls, but everywhere else I've worked, I get the same reaction: what is the big deal, they say. Just write with this pen..handing them whatever the pen hotness was then: Uniballs, Pilots, etc. It was always fun to find converts, especially in the crossword puzzle factions at various workplaces.
I don't write so much anymore, but still have nice pens around for crossword puzzles, notes, etc. (Fine tip Pilot G-2, and the even more fine tip Pilot Hi-Tec-C's). Couple of fountain pens. Mechanical pencils for my rare home projects, etc.
I always enjoy the review articles, and I have spent tons of time at various "pen review" pages. I really like the web site for "Jet Pens", a Japanese company which advertises itself as providing "the best pens, paper, and art supplies from Japan and beyond!" They have all sorts of things that may be difficult to find in an American "office supply store". They also have many "sample packs" of various art pens, gel pens, markers, etc. And, office and desk supplies that are unique and extremely useful. I've bought several of the sample packs for various relatives and their offspring (and me!) and they always seem to be a hit.
https://www.jetpens.com/JetPens-Samplers/ct/6071
posted by pthomas745 at 10:11 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Ralph Nader dismissing Wirecutter selections as bullshit is probably the smartest thing Ralph Nader has done in a quarter century.

Wirecutter addressing Ralph Nader's pen concerns by basically ignoring his original issue and sending him a bunch of their choices instead is very on brand though
posted by phooky at 10:13 AM on May 4 [29 favorites]

Heh - my roomie reads magazines in the bathroom and it was open to a thing about 2000 and a map of Nader voters. Now I see this. Universe has Nader on the mind for some reason.
posted by symbioid at 10:31 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

Papermate was acquired by Newell Brands in 2000, which I don’t have the patience to reconstruct the history for, but has also been known as Newell Rubbermaid. It’s a big conglomerate that also owns (or owned) brands like Prismacolor, Rubbermaid, Calphalon, Yankee Candle, and probably even more surprising and uninspiring nonsense.

It is an entirely soulless conglomerate that is managed by the numbers, so it should be unsurprising that the pens are shittier and will only get worse. They are the corporate personification of enshittification.
posted by jimw at 10:37 AM on May 4 [8 favorites]

I do like that they address the non-refillability of his favored pens.

They really should have sent him some variations of the Pentel Sign Pen, they are probably closer to what he likes. Maybe the Stabilo Pen 68, too.
posted by jimw at 10:49 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

I lived in the hellscape of blue Bics until one day, in 7th grade, I found on the floor a Uni-Ball Roller. Once I touched it to the paper, my life was changed. Thank you, Uni-Ball. You changed writing from a chore to a joy.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:54 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Oh is this why my Prismacolor pencils I bought a while back are such shit? Damn.

We need to destroy private equity/holding companies. They ruin everything. Also there was a thing recently where mefi's own Adam Savage did a video on the ruination of his favorite pencil.
posted by symbioid at 10:54 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]

They address it a little in the article, but the reason I keep using sharpie pens is durability. Durable tip, durable ink. And it doesn't feel like scrawling with a nail, as Flashman put it.

With that said, I can totally see someone coming along with a better felt tip field pen that I struggle to appreciate because it doesn't "feel" right. We build relationships with our tools.
posted by Leeway at 10:59 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]

Mod note: One comment removed, please don’t bring the US elections in this thread.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 11:00 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]

Ralph Nader dismissing Wirecutter selections as bullshit is probably the smartest thing Ralph Nader has done in a quarter century.

I like how what gets highlighted is that WC's criteria, and their use cases, aren't necessarily the same as Nader's or yours or mine. I feel a lot like there's a big cultural emphasis on finding the objective best of some category, but there's usually no such thing: there's so much subjectivity, and so many different needs and usage patterns, that "best" doesn't really make sense for a lot of things. Especially for something like pens, where there's such a tactile, personal relationship between the writer and the instrument.
posted by trig at 11:01 AM on May 4 [11 favorites]

Wirecutter addressing Ralph Nader's pen concerns by basically ignoring his original issue and sending him a bunch of their choices instead is very on brand though

He had one complaint: they don't last long enough. And the article doesn't even mention longevity as a consideration in the pens they sent him.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:15 AM on May 4 [3 favorites]

I love that Ralph Nader uses the same pens that every tweenage girl in the late 80s would use to write in her Lisa Frank notebook.

I spent way too much time learning about pens when playing around with computer plotter art. By far the best resource I found was JetPens. They have an extensive blog that no doubt was written for SEO purposes but has actual meaningful content (ending, of course, in a link to buy pens from them). For instance this article about types of ink was super helpful to me.

Felt tip pens are a bit out of their expertise. Then again the Wirecutter article bafflingly covers all sorts of types of pens in this one article. I'm a fan of the Sakura Pigma Microns myself but comparing a fineliner to a felt tip is a bit confusing to me. They have different purposes.
posted by Nelson at 11:17 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]

Writing on newsprint is a challenging use case. I'm trying to think back to when I had regular access to a newspaper I didn't despise to recall what I used (yes, I'm one those people who marks up articles), and those memories are apparently lost.

The print edition of In These Times uses a nice stock that is a good mid-point between super glossy magazine paper where a pen like the Flair works well and a crumbly, matte newsprint-like stock that causes issues. There I use a modern hybrid ballpoint ink, like the Schmidt EasyFlow 9000, which is one of the few places I currently use ballpoints.

If I had to write on newsprint, I might try a pencil with a grade in the multiple Bs range, such as the Musgrave Pencil Company's News 600 model.

Brad Dowdy of The Pen Addict podcast offered some thoughts in this week's episode.
posted by audi alteram partem at 11:30 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

I love pens.

The Bic Orange Original is, in my opinion, the greatest mass-produced pen ever made. Handles well, great mileage, starts reliably. Like a Honda Civic, but for writing. Maybe more distinctive, though still pretty plain.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:38 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]

PEAK NADER
posted by atomicstone at 11:40 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]

I just want to see Ralph Nader and Adam Savage do a weekly roundup of "Here's a Bunch More Things that Aren't as Good as They Used To Be". I could see them getting sort of a Statler and Waldorf vibe going.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:59 AM on May 4 [18 favorites]

Also there was a thing recently where mefi's own Adam Savage did a video on the ruination of his favorite pencil.

Which, if you'll recall, is none other than the Sharpwriter, also made by Papermate.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:38 PM on May 4 [2 favorites]

I've been using the Pentel EnerGel NV Liquid Gel 0.7 mm ball metal point pens for at least 30 years, maybe closer to 35, and they are perfect for me.

99.9% of the time, I use the black ones, though I've noticed when I've purchased rarer colors, they are often dried up and unusable upon purchase. But the black ones? I buy a box of a dozen every couple of years, and I use two simultaneously; one when I'm with clients, one when I'm at home/in the office. They write smoothly, last a long time, and yes, I still clip articles (mostly from magazines, not newspapers), annotate them, and mail them to people.

i hope, he is actually cutting the articles out of the paper

Presumably, he bought his favorite pair of scissors in 1965 and has so far been able to get it sharpened as needed.

I purloined my office Wiss scissors from my mom's desk when I went off to college in the 80s; I have no doubt that they date from the 1960s, or possibly the 1950s. (Sadly, I never see a knift sharpening dude in my neighborhood.) Stuff used to work pretty much forever.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 1:00 PM on May 4 [11 favorites]

They are the corporate personification of enshittification.

The one thing I will give Newell -- they still repair Rotring pencils. You gotta find your original receipt, apply for warranty service, and then mail them to France, but they'll do it, which frankly surprised me.
posted by aramaic at 1:04 PM on May 4 [4 favorites]

I grew up in a culture, small town BC in the '70s, where art wasn't really a thing. I have drawn as long as I remember and what I drew with was ball point pens because the classic HB pencils around the house were extremely frustrating. We never had anything approaching an artists' grade drawing implement in the house, it just wasn't on the radar, so cheap ballpoint pens it was.
Over time I gravitated towards the classic Bic Cristal black pen. That is what I have used for decades now. The portrait of Robert Oppenheimer I use in my bio here was done with several of these pens.
Over time I have noticed the quality has declined a certain amount, and the only place I can find them is on Amazon, which I refuse to use but I fear, because my stockpile is running out, that I may have to now.
They are shitty, but that means you can manipulate them for effect. A high end writing instrument wants to give a you a good line at all times. Also, I add acrylic varnish to a lot of my drawings and over time that turns them a lovely shade of golden sepia. I am fascinated by this and have done it for about 25 years now. The exact effect is unpredictable, which is one of the reasons I do it.
Anyways, as one may have guessed by the length of this comment, this is a subject very dear to me.
A shout out to the wonderful, crappy, mass produced Bic Cristal, still my favourite drawing tool.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 1:13 PM on May 4 [14 favorites]

Flair has always been my favorite, and I agree that they dry out faster than they used to.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:52 PM on May 4 [1 favorite]

I am imagining a gel pen with a yet more thixotropic (becoming more liquid under stress) ink than usual, with a 32,768 Hz (which I believe is a standard quartz watch crystal frequency) vibrating element at the tip which would turn on when the pen touches paper and off when it lifts away.

The effect would be very roughly analogous to using a hot glue gun.

I bet the greater liquidity of the ink coupled with the vibration would make the pen glide frictionlessly over the paper as no pen has before. Wouldn’t be that hard to prototype either, because you could probably gut a watch for the parts you needed to see if it was even feasible.

Isn’t it about time, in our ever more microelectronic age, that pens and pencils also broke through the exclusively mechanical/chemical barrier?
posted by jamjam at 3:30 PM on May 4 [9 favorites]

jamjam, if you invent that pen and market it, in 30 years I will release a 45 minute youtube video bitterly complaining when you change the pocket clip geometry slightly.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:05 PM on May 4 [14 favorites]

uni- ball onyx #1.
posted by clavdivs at 4:28 PM on May 4

If jamjam invents that pen HP will buy the rights and be prepping their emails reminding you to subscribe for more ink access in about 30 minutes.
posted by biffa at 5:14 PM on May 4 [3 favorites]

I bought a random pen once while at the university stationer, and it was the best pen I'd ever owned - strong ink line, no smearing, no blotting, no scratchiness, truly the perfect pen. And I don't remember the brand name, and I never found it again. If I had realised I'd never find them again, I probably would have bought a box. Every time I need to buy a pen, I have to go into the shop and try pens until I find one that feels acceptable. I cannot find any of them. I am sorry how useless this comment is if you're going to shop for pens, but I recall having positive feelings about the Uni JetStreams.

I did go to Japan about 18 months ago and go looking for a Nice Pen. I don't think I got the perfect pen, but I got one that is pretty good. I picked the label off it to improve hand-feel, which doesn't really help anyone.
posted by Merus at 8:24 PM on May 4 [3 favorites]

The pen I miss the most is the Sanford Expresso Extra Fine point. I wrote with those for decades. Discontinued now. Sanford was also bought out by Newell Rubbermaid.

I have one Expresso extra fine left.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:26 PM on May 4 [5 favorites]

Then there are those who love the big tip Sharpie, especially when doing hurricane weather forecasts or signing autographs.
posted by nofundy at 2:47 AM on May 5 [1 favorite]

Grew up using Fountain Pens as my school did not like us kids using ballpoint pens, as the teachers thought that this somehow degraded handwriting! The number of shirts and books destroyed because of leaking ink finally convinced me to get away from these monstrosities, because we could only afford the cheap ones.

The school allowed us to start using ballpoints sometime during my high school years. The big thing growing up in India was Parker Pens!! I had one growing up and through college. Now I have Uniball Jetstream, Pilot G2 and a Pentel Energel in my bag.

It is kinda hard to find replacement cartridges for these, though.
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:53 AM on May 5 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure if I'm just having left handed issues, getting the wrong pens, the wrong paper, or using too much/little pressure but every brand of pen I've tried lately has had the bad habit of working fine for a few letters then running into a patch of paper it just won't mark on.

I used to use the Bic Stic without issue, now there's issues. I've reverted to pencils.
posted by sotonohito at 6:56 PM on May 5 [1 favorite]

I write checks with a gel pen, the ink is harder to remove by fraudsters, who soak the checks in solvent and then fill in whatever they want while keeping your signature intact. Gel soaks into the paper while ballpoint ink remains on the surface. I avoid writing when I can but sometimes I just have to send a check in the mail.
posted by waving at 7:34 AM on May 6

Uni-ball Signo micro 207 was the pen that fulfilled all my wishes in a pen, but the last several have been hard to write with, not enough ink wants to come out it seems.

Sadness.
posted by of strange foe at 10:40 AM on May 7