Ballpoint Pens Key Terms

Learn some ballpoint pens key terms before you shop

Everyone uses pens, businesses especially; they are something you will always need on hand. Your company will need ballpoint pens for employee use as well as for customers. It's a basic purchase, but ballpoint pens come in a wide variety of styles so you should carefully consider what type of pens to buy for your business. Learning some key ballpoint pen terms is a good way to start your pen purchasing research.

Promotional pens

Promotional pens have your business name or other information written on them. Consider purchasing promotional pens for your business, to be used by employees and customers alike. When customers and employees accidentally take your pens home, you have a great form of advertising!

Rollerball pens

Rollerball pens have a point similar to that of a regular ballpoint, but write with water-based ink or gelled ink as opposed to oil-based ink as found in regular ballpoint pens. When selecting pens for your business, it's important to know that rollerball pens saturate more deeply into the paper, but can be found in a wider range of colors.

Erasable pens

Erasable pens do exactly as their name suggests, they can be erased. Unlike traditional ballpoint pens which have ink that goes into the paper fibers, erasable pen ink is made from a rubber cement solution and stays on the top of the paper, allowing it to be erased. After a day or two, however, the ink can't be erased very well and will just smudge. Also, be aware that stacking erasable ink papers in a pile may smear or erase the writing.

Space pens

Space pens use pressurized ink and are promoted as being able to write anywhere on almost any surface. They are claimed to be able to write upside down, underwater and in zero gravity, thus the name space pen.

Bulk pens

As with almost anything, purchasing ballpoint pens in large amounts at one time, or in bulk, will give you a smaller cost per item. Most companies offer pens in bulk, with their quantities and prices varying.

Bic

Ballpoint pens are often referred to as Bics. Bic is the most popular ballpoint pen manufacturer in the world.