Page 6 of blue pens
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Blue office pens for writing and sketching jobs
Blue pens are available in all styles, tip sizes, barrel designs, and ink formulas for writing invoices, letters, and other types of copy in the office. They’re available as part of a broad array of writing supplies from many well-known brands, such as TRU RED™, Pilot®, Sharpie®, BiC®, and Pentel®. With a multitude of different models, individuals can choose the thickness of the lines they want to leave on paper, the barrel that’s most comfortable in their hand, and the type of blue ink that’s best for their assignment, whether writing, sketching, or highlighting. These are also among the wide array of pens that you can choose individually for their unique design or in bulk for their cost-saving advantages.
General types of bulk blue pens
While red, blue, or black pens have several characteristics that define their use in the office or at school or home, their identifying quality is the style of their nib, or pen tip, and the ink they use.
The most common types of pen tips are:
- Ballpoint: A small metal ball rolls and rotates in the pen-tip housing, collecting ink from the cartridge and then transferring it on paper
- Rollerball: The same configuration and mechanism as a ballpoint pen
- Felt tip, marker-style: A felt or fibrous, cone-shape tip tapered to a point, saturated with ink from the cartridge, often for drawing or highlighting in bold rich colors
- Felt tip, needle-point: A minute, plastic barrel-shape tip fixed in the tip housing, also saturated with rich, vibrant ink
- Fountain pen: A split-tip with a tiny ball on each point, collecting a continuous flow of ink from a cartridge or reservoir
However, like different styles of pencils, including mechanical pencils, these tips don’t always define specific types of pens. For instance, while ballpoints and rollerballs have the same tip, they use different ink. Ballpoints use oil-based ink, which dries quickly on paper and provides a consistent ink flow. Rollerballs use pigmented water-based ink that, with a lower viscosity than oil, flows faster from the tip and leaves more vivid coloration ? more ink saturation ? on paper.
However, gel pens are also rollerball pens, except they consist of pigmented water-based gel so they have their own category. The gel has a consistency of water and oil combined, providing smooth ink flow with color saturation. Felt pens normally use water-based inks combined with alcohol or a safe alcohol substitute so they dry quickly on paper.
Thus, the breakdown of pen-type categories for writing, drawing, and sketching in blue ink is the following: ballpoint, rollerball, gel, felt-tip marker, felt-tip needlepoint, and fountain pen.
All styles of these blue pens are available in package sizes, often in bulk amounts for school and office use, mostly in packs of a dozen, and often in buckets of 36 or boxes of 60. However, many manufacturers also make distinctive, often luxury blue pens as solo items, including brands like Monteverde USA®, Paper Mate,® uni-ball®, and Zebra®.
The size of blue pen tips
Each type of pen and its tip comes in point sizes measured in millimeters (mm), and described as a certain point thickness, or how thin or wide the line it leaves on paper. However, manufacturers often use different standards for equating a mm size with its point thickness. Ultra-fine point pens are 0.3 mm in size, while extra-fine point pens have a 0.4 mm tip. Pen tip sizes then run from 0.5, 0.7, 0.8 to 1.0 mm, or from fine to medium to bold point tips, varying between manufacturer. Bold points include 1.2, 1.6, and even 2 and 3 mm. The better measure of size is the mm rating, and for handwriting purposes, you should test-drive pens with 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0 tips to see which one suits your style and comfort level.
Barrel shapes and designs
Blue pens are available either as stick pens, slender cylinders available in economy bulk packaging, or barrel pens, wider, often round, contoured, or tapered for writing comfort, sometimes with designer touches like ridges or edging. Many pens come with rubber or textured barrels for comfort and maneuverability. The barrels can also be transparent or shade-translucent, letting you see how much blue ink remains in the cartridge. Some pens have solid-color barrels mimicking the color of the ink inside. With gel or felt pens, which may come in different shades of blue, the colored barrel lets you identify the exact shade you need when working with a lot of different pen colors on a project.
Unlike wood pencils that need constant sharpening to maintain their functionality, pens are capped or retractable to keep their ink from drying out. Caps often have integrated pocket clips so you can carry them with you from one place to another. Retractable pens have a plunge mechanism that you push to extend the tip from or retract it into the barrel. Most retractable have barrel pocket clips. Capped pens, including economy stick pens, are normally one-and-done models. Most retractable blue pens have replaceable cartridges.
Benefits of versatile blue ink pens
Choosing a specific ink color may be a matter of personal preference. However, certain colors like red pens may be important for underlining important sections while studying, marking exams or papers, or creating vivid artistic shapes and images on paper. Blue ink is a logical choice for original signatures on important documents, including wills, deeds, and contracts, since it easily stands apart from black ink that might otherwise be a reproduction of the original.
Check out Quill for the full range of blue pens in a wide assortment of point tips and sizes, including distinctive individual pens and pens in many bulk package amounts.
