Ballpoint Pens Key Terms

Learn some ballpoint pens key terms before you shop

By Susan Davis

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!
Try: National Pen Company has great examples of the various types of promotional pens available.

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.
Try: An office supply company such as Staples will carry a wide variety of rollerball pens for you to choose from.

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.
Try: For a big selection of erasable pens, try eraseablepens.net.

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.
Try: The Fisher Spacepen Company is the only manufacturer of space pens. Their website has all of their available products.

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.
Try: Zhejiang ZJ Pensgo Stationery is a good place to start your bulk pen search.

Bic

Ballpoint pens are often referred to as Bics. Bic is the most popular ballpoint pen manufacturer in the world.
Try: A full range of Bic pen products can found at BicPens.com. There are also Bic pens in bulk on this site.