What are everyone’s favourite pens and stationery items?

Definitely not unique but I love my Lamy Safari with Noodler's Black Ink.

I'll write on anything from random post-it notes, to my moleskin notebooks, to legal pads, etc. lol

I've been in love with Pilot G-2 (I prefer 07 but 05 is still lovely) for probably at least a decade now. Never found another type of pen that matches the pleasurable writing experience. I've tried fountain pens but I just love the smooth feeling as the G-2 glides over the paper. I can definitely tell the difference between better and worse paper, but I'll use either as long as I can use one of my favorite pens. I fear if I committed to nice paper I'd never go back!

To give an unusual answer: over the last several months, I've stopped regularly using any of my other fountain pens, and have entirely switched to vintage safety fountain pens.

"Safety" is an odd term for them. In a safety pen a retraction mechanism makes it so that, when closed, the nib is actually in the ink reservoir, entirely, and the reservoir is fully closed. In some sense, this maybe makes it less likely to leak if shaken very strongly, something that seems unlikely. It comes with the downside that, if opened improperly, it will dump the ink out.

But the real advantage is that it is completely reliable. The ink never dries out, and the nib never dries out: there are stories of pens being found in from fallen soldiers in European battlefields that are still usable with the ink that had been put in them at the time. When opened, the nib is always in the same state, and writes consistently. There are also models with the sorts of flexible nibs that simply aren't produced today.

I have too many fountain pens (18 to be exact), but I only ink a few at a time. Though, Lamy 2000 and TWSBI 700R Iris are almost always in my rotation. 2000 is inked with Diamine Jet Black; 700R is inked with Diamine Writer's Blood. I try to keep a low-cost pen like a Pilot Kakuno or Lamy Safari with an archival ink to sign documents.

I journal often. This year, I'm using Hobonichi Weekly, though I'm regretting that decision slightly. I thought I could get used to its size, but it's giving me a hard time. Since it's using Tomoe River paper, it's very fun and smooth to write on, though. For other purposes, I use A5 Midori paper. You feel more in touch with the paper since Midori is not as smooth, and I like that it's a stark difference in feeling.

I also carry a Parker Jotter and a Lamy Aion rollerball, since not every paper is fountain pen friendly.

I am so happy someone asked this question. I ramble to my friends about how the uniball Vision Elite rollerball pens are the greatest (non-fountain) pens ever made at least once every few months, and their tolerance for listening to it has only gone downhill over time. FWIW, I now find using "regular" pens genuinely difficult and unpleasant in comparison, and always carry a few VEs in my purse so I can avoid having to.

1. The ink is rich and vivid, even with black. No muted greys that pretend to be black, like your typical ballpoint. Don't even get me started on the colours--especially the BLX series, which blend the coloured inks with black ink to create an understated, elegant look.
2. The ink melds with the paper. I always get the sense with regular pens that the ink is just loosely sitting on top, which feels not only unsatisfying but rather more "transient" than I would like (as though you could rub the ink off if you tried hard enough). uni's ink, specifically, has been engineered to be extraordinarily resilient and bind to the fibers of the paper.
3. The pen is very good looking. Especially in the Designer variant. Shallow reason, but, like... c'mon.
4. They feel hefty, solid, and well-constructed; I find Bics (and similarly cheap pens) cramp-inducing to use in comparison.

I use them at work, and they're constantly being pilfered by my co-workers (with permission) because they're that much better than any pen anyone else uses--enough that I tend to buy boxes of 10-20 at a time. (I work in healthcare, where we need to fill out a lot of paperwork all of the time.)

Not an ad, nor am I affiliated with uni, just in case I need to clarify that. I just really, really like the pen.

A lot of chat about fountain pens here, which makes sense because it seems like a common progression in hobby stationery to eventually move to these.

However, my favourite pen ever is a ball point due to the practicality: the Uni Powertank, specifically the smart series. I exclusively use black ink, 0.7 mm tip.

This is truly a pen that has never let me down, the pressurised ink cartridge means that it never fails to write smoothly and clearly, on pretty much any surface. I'm always writing on my hand and this works every time. It's also the finest point I've found on a pressurised pen; before I found this one I experimented with Fisher space pens but found the 1 mm tip to be too thick and also blotchy? I have small handwriting so a fine point is a big plus.

Unfortunately, they seem to have stopped making this pen as of about a year ago. They still make the regular power tank but I find the body must less comfortable to use and I hate the clip. The regular one sits much higher in the pocket than the smart series. I have had to resort to buying refill cartridges from the regular one to put into my old smart bodies, which are getting quite weathered these days, and I only have two or three left.

I got into fountain pens a few years back, and while I don't have the budget for a big collection I do have six different pens that all have different uses and feels.

1. Lamy Safari - my first fountain pen, I got this for D&D notes almost three years ago and was instantly hooked. For a while it got used for everything, but now it's back to note-taking duty. It originally came with a Medium nib, but I switched to Fine since I prefer narrower points on pens (I used to get Pilot G2 pens in 0.38). I used a converter with it for a while, but have since switched back to cartridges for convenience.

2. Sheaffer Prelude - I bought this used, it came in a nice case along with a cartridge converter. The fine tip on this one is pointier than my Safari, so it's great for thin and precise writing. I used this for journaling for several months while I improved my penmanship, and simply using the pen was enough motivation for me to continue writing. It also has a fine tip which is a bit narrower than the Safari, but still smooth enough to write well. I use this exclusively with a converter, although I just use basic Lamy black ink (for now).

3. Kaweco Sport - this was my first pocket pen. I have to post with it (that is, put the cap on the back) to write well, but other than that it's a fantastic little pen. Mine has a medium nib, so individual strokes are wider than my other pens, but because of that it writes incredibly smoothly on almost anything. Due to the size, I only use Standard International short cartridges, but they each last me a few weeks depending on how often I write.

4. Retro 51 Tornado - this is my most expensive pen (so far?), and it writes incredibly smoothly. I got the special Nikola Tesla edition with copper cladding, which may have been a mistake since this is also my heaviest pen. It writes incredibly smoothly, but I think part of that is because the fine nib on it is as broad as the medium tip on my Kaweco pocket pen. I mainly pull this out when I have something important to write, and it was my pocket accessory during my wedding because the copper just looks nice. This is another converter pen for me, and it's made well enough that it still writes easily even if I don't use it for weeks or months at a time.

5. Unknown, a kit pen from a local art fair. This is a pen I bought from a local wood turner, the actual pen components are from a kit and the body and cap use walnut that he turned on a lathe. I alternate between loving and hating this pen. On one hand, it's lightweight and elegant, and when it writes, it writes well; on the other hand, it likes to unscrew from its cap in my pocket and jab me in the thigh, which also creates a big inkstain in my pocket and outside of my pants. I'm fairly certain that this has damaged the nib, which is a cheap Iridium Point that I need to replace anyway, which also means it doesn't write as well as it did when I got it. I use Standard International cartridges in this one, although the fit is slightly looser than I like so I've had one cartridge come loose and cause a leak.

6. Sailor Compass 1911 - Another pocket pen, this one has a finer nib than my Kaweco but writes just as smoothly. I love writing with this pen, but hate carrying it. Any impact (dropping it, stepping too hard or running, etc) causes it to fling ink all over the inside of the cap, which gets on the grip section. I rarely write with this without getting ink all over my hands, which has caused ink to get on a few things I don't want them to. For now, this is a general-use pen at home, since it's safer there and less likely to be damaged.

Of these pens, I recommend either the Lamy Safari or the Retro 51 Tornado. If you go with the Tornado, any non-metal finishes should be lighter and easier to write with. The Safari is a fantastic choice that really shouldn't be considered just my beginner pen, as it's reliable, writes smoothly, and takes punishment when carried. There is also the Lamy Al-Star, which is basically the same pen but with an aluminum body - it's what I got for my groomsmen as gifts, each in the color of their choice with their name engraved on it.

My paper recommendations are based on journaling, mostly in A5 or A6 notepad sizes. I've found Muji to be the most affordable good-quality paper, and they make for excellent pocket notebooks. I'm sure their larger offerings are also good, assuming that the materials are the same. I also have a Midori notebook that's the same size, which is thicker but still good quality. It's more expensive per page, so it ranks slightly under Midori. My final "normal" paper recommendations are Rhodia and Leuchtterm 1917, both are smooth and write well with almost every pen I've tried.

For something with hidden flair, I have two recommendations for stone-based paper: Karst and Hive. I use a Karst notebook that I got at B&N as a commonplace book, so it gets a lot of opening and closing even if it doesn't get written to constantly. My Hive notebook is a tiny A6 pocket book that I haven't started using yet, but I love it because it has all sorts of measurement conversions in a chart in the front. I love the novelty of both, telling people I'm writing on stone never gets old to me. I have just enough fantasy Dwarf in me to be enamored by the concept in general, so I recommend both brands.

Avoid Moleskine. They aren't as premium as they market themselves as, and there's better offerings for similar prices.

I know you asked for pens but I'm a pencil dude all day long. I absolutely love my Pentel GraphGear 1000. While the pencil is intended for drafting, I just love writing with it. I take notes and write my daily to-do lists using it. I also like to do small sketches randomly throughout the day and it is unsurprisingly good for that.

I write all my notes and to-do lists in a Moleskine Cahier Journal. The main reason I love these journals is they open flat. Being left handed, I find most notebooks annoying to write in since my wrist always hits something

I like Tombow brush pens, and their Mono pencils too. I also like a Uniball Jetstream as a good general purpose ink pen. Mnemosyne paper if I'm feeling rich, but Caran d'ache or Rhodia will also be fine. Hightide do a lovely two colour aluminium ruler if you like that sort of thing. Hightide are always worth a look for quality accessories.

I'm fond of my banana colored kaweco sport. I love the look of short/squat pens. Writing with it is delightful but often messy because I can be a bit careless and zone out/fidget with it without realizing I'm getting ink everywhere. My favorite form-over-function pen is the Lamy Pico. Small enough to fit in my tiny pockets (curse you, lady pants!) no problem but the expanding mechanism means that it's still comfortable to hold for longer writing sessions. It always makes people smile when I lend it out. The actual ink and writing experience is just okay - nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. It shines by being the pen I always have on-hand.

I'm also want to take a moment to share my love of basic BIC mechanical pencils. The regular old #2 0.7mm pencils they make are freakishly decent for the price. They always seem to work consistently and have by far the best eraser out of the bulk cheapie options. I keep a bunch scattered around the house and office

I rotate through my pens and I feel like the search for the One True Pen has unfortunately kept that Reddit-hobby-consumerist-treadmill going far longer than it should have. I think my actual favorite pen was a Sailor Pro Gear Slim that I got on sale, which started life with a broad nib that I sent to Kirk Speer to be ground to a fine architect. I say "was" because in an effort to destash, I let some folks try my pens and freely take the ones that they liked. My partner chose the PGS so off it went!

Anyways, it really depends on what I'm doing! I favor smaller handwriting but also really like to admire ink on the page, so any note taking is done with my Parker 51, Sailor 1911s, or a Pilot Kakuno which all lie somewhere on the western EF, Japanese F/M range in terms of line width. If I'm doodling I bring out the Japanese EF/Fs that are pretty dang close to needlepoints, with maybe some messy coloring done with my broader nibs (shout out to my EF Lamy Safari that basically writes the same as a broad Pilot, oof).

I really like my Take a Note A5 planner. I'm not great at keeping up with planner use throughout the year, so the empty pages get filled with random musings or doodles. And when I do keep up with it, it's like a brief several days of clarity and groundedness before I regress back to an ADHD fugue. I'm working on it!

My practical "i need a pen now" that's literally clipped on my wallet is a Bullet Space Pen, as I also have a tiny notebook in my wallet as well.

For fountain pens, my handwriting is bad enough I mostly just care about the aesthetics.

I love the fireblue Kaweco Liliput, but that pen is actually not stellar as it doesn't always write when I need it to (nib seems eh). I have a few others already mentioned in this thread (safari and what not).

I recently have been using the novium Hoverpen as someone got it for me as a gift since it looks good on my desk at work, and I can have it use the various inks i'm still working through (mostly noodler's).

Think that's about it these days. I was very happy with my TWBSI ECO for quite some time until I lost/broke it, and i've got a zillion little pens on my keychain/in my bag at just about any moment. If I could find a small fountain pen that had the "speed" of something like the bullet I'd do that (pull off cap, writes when I need it to, no futzing around hoping the ink is flowing), and maybe i'll look into a rollerball for that one day since those also flow nicely, but yeah that's about it.

Mostly I find the need for me to write something to be a "RIGHT NOW" thing and the last thing I want is to be screwing around with my writing instrument.

Oh I forgot, I despise pencil generally but wanted one that could take the place of my bullet space pen so I got a Kaweco Special Mechanical Pencil which I use rarely (mostly when practicing sketching for art, which I am very very bad at).

I went down the rabbit hole a while back and got into dip pens. They’re really fun, but not soldering you can practically use at the office.

My next favorite is an antique fountain pen I found on eBay. Resisters will sell them for less than some modern fountain pens if you can find a plain, everyday use model rather than a display piece. Old school fountain pens have very soft and springy nibs, modern fountain pens have hard nibs. There’s a whole community around altering Noodler pens with dip pen nibs, this is also fun but the ink never seems to flow correctly in the ones I made.

My next favorite is a Staedtler pigment liner, .5 mm. I had tried the more popular Micron pens first, they all dropped out after 1-2 uses.

Next is a gel pen, I like the Pilot ones. These are click pens and can handle a lot of abuse.

Finally the weird one, Skilcraft (US government) pens, the ones Irene used to steal from the post office. While they aren’t the nicest thing in the world to write with, these pens are kind of amazing. I have driven over them with a forklift, they were pretty much unaffected. I cannot say the same for the Sharpies that basically exploded. (No, this wasn’t some kind of office supply torture session, I worked in a packing warehouse where writing supplies sometimes ended up sliding off boxes and falling out of pockets onto the floor.)

The pen barrels had to withstand temperatures as extreme as a North Pole winter and a Death Valley summer — from negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit to 160 degrees.

The pens had to write for nearly a linear mile — about 5,000 feet of paper — before the ink cartridge needed to be refilled. The ink had to dry within five seconds and be guaranteed not to smear or blot. Printed on paper, the ink had to withstand being submerged underwater for 48 hours and two doses of chemical bleach.

As for paper, everyone seems to have different favorites. You can find a huge variety in any office supply or art store and it isn’t very expensive. For pens that have flowing ink, you’ll want paper with texture, they call it paper with “some tooth to it”.

I use this pencil and whatever paper

I don't like writing with pens, and several years ago I wanted to find a nice mechanical pencil that I could buy a bunch of and use forever, and I tried maybe 8 or 10 different varieties. This was BY FAR the best. I almost wrote it off (haha) because I wanted the clicky lead advancer thing to be near the tip, not on the back, but this pencil is so comfortable and nice to hold that I immediately compromised on that requirement, and I never want a different mechanical pencil ever again.

I've basically stopped handwriting entirely in the past few years. After I got a mac the quick note functionality was too good for me to fumble around with pens and papers and losing them, and that was my primary reason to handwrite.

The best fountain pen, in my opinion, is the Pilot Vanishing Point, or as it's known in Japan, the Capless. Honestly, just making a clicky retractable-nib fountain pen is enough to make it a winner, but the nib is truly fantastic. Pilot makes some of the best nibs, and the Capless nib has a lovely flex to it and it's got some very narrow wings that are less visually distracting. The only real downside to it is that to fill it you have to disassemble it, but it's a tradeoff well worth taking.

I actually lost that pen a while back, and Vanishing Point pens are ludicrisly overpriced in the US so I never replaced it. I'm actually really sore about that because it was a gift from my husband. The pen that I used after was a Wing Sung 698; a transparent piston-filling demonstrator with gold accents and a screw-cap, which I had replaced the nib with a Platinum metro. It was basically the next-most-perfect pen; I loved all of those features. The screw cap was actually really important because I moved it everywhere and so I needed to make sure it didn't leak when jostling it around.

I used that pen until it literally fell apart. Now that I'm not writing I have much cheaper pens from a company I didn't actually like before in my bag; a Platinum Preppy and a Prefounte. I bought the prefounte because I forgot I bought the Preppy. I had really bad experiences with Preppies in the past because Platinum had really bad QA on their pens but I assume they must have gotten better - or maybe I just got luckier. They are good enough^TM; I bought converters for both of them so I could use my own ink (lord knows I have more than enough), and most importantly Platinum has the best sealing snap caps in the industry, so they won't dry up from lack of use in my bag or leak.

I never got into fountain pens. I tried one of the cheap Lamy pens, but it just didn’t seem worth it to me. So I stick with standard pens, mostly G2 refill compatible.

Just last year, I discovered the joy that is gel ink. It’s pretty hard to find gel ink in Parker G2 refills, but you can find it. Previously, even with very high quality refills, the writing experience was just okay. Every gel refill I have tried makes the writing experience fantastic (when paired with a quality pen). My current favorite is a Parker brand gel black ink 0.7mm. I’ve tried 0.5mm, but I like the 0.7 way better.

My current favorite pen is the LTT scribedriver. It is built from faulty screwdriver shafts, so it has the added benefit of being partially recycled. But even without that, or any brand affiliation, it’s just a really nice pen. My previous favorite was a rotring (I think rapid pro), but the LTT is way better (and cheaper).

For pens, I don't have anything unique. I'm another happy fan of the Lamy Safari and Lamy All-Star. I pretty much always keep one on me whenever I leave the house. They are reliable, have a comfortable grip and are not too expensive that if I lose one while out of the house, it's not the end of the world. They also seem to be able to write on anything with no problem. Doesn't matter if it's a cheap spiral notebook from Walmart or some nicer stationary that I've picked up over on JetPens. I also keep a box of Uniball Roller pens if I ever need a no-fuss pen to write down something quick.

For notebooks, I remember hearing that Moleskins were great but I did not like them when I tried them. My fountain pens seemed to always bleed right through them to the next page and make the back of the pages I was writing on useless. I'm currently using these Bulleted Mini Journals from Monk Manual as my pocket notebook which I adore. They're super cheap and don't have a bleeding problem with my nicer pens. I'm also using a Kai Rui Ying hardcover journal as my main journal that I'm almost done filling up, but I'm not sure where it came from.. I thought I bought it from JetPens but it doesn't seem like they carry them anymore.

Not much of a writing aficionado, but I like what I have so I guess I'll share as well.

For neat writing I prefer Pentel's Energel BL77 RT 0.7, the S3 color has a special bond to me. My dad always had a fountain pen with that specific color.

For quick scribbles I use basic ballpoints provided by a stationary webstore here in the Netherlands called 123inkt.nl. They've done something magical with their ballpoints because they are simply superb and you find them in nearly EVERY household in the Netherlands.

At peak note taking in grad school I used a Lamy Safari annd either Moleskine or Rhodia notebooks. I still take more hand written notes than most people but I don't feel like the fountain pen is really worth the hassle.

My prefered pen is now a uni-ball Air. It writes similar to a fountain pen but more forgiving, extremely smooth, clear, and sharp. My notetaking syle is a bastardized cursive so a responsive nib is helpful for clarity.

I still prefer Rhodia books but use Moleskine due to availability.

My answer is simple, a black Paper Mate Kilometrico. Cheap, comfortable enough, and reliable enough. Stationery is one of those things that I won't get into 'collecting' because I think the words written down are more important than the tools with which they're written. I also have yet to find an expensive pen that is notable more comfortable to use than a cheap one.

My favourite pencil is the Blackwing! Once I used that, I couldn't go back to any other pencil. Unless it's a mechanical pencil. I still use those.

But Blackwings are insanely expensive though. So I treasure them.

I fell in love with the Muji fountain pen. In the beginning not so much because I found the design of its cap quite strange but it grew on me. The nib is soft, it is very sturdy cause it had an aluminium body and I can pair it with the staendler mechanical pencil because their grip are really similar.
The only downside is that Muji doesn't sell it where I live :/

I've always like pencils better than pens

I used to use only mechanical pencils, but I am always breaking the led cause I press down to hard

I bought some infinity pencils and they are great, I can even use them where it's not conductive to write like on a shopping cart and not worry about them breaking

I wish these were a thing when I was in elementary school

I never got too deep, but I got a full color set of Twisbi Eco pens, all with various Noodler inks with red, orange, green, purple, blue, and black. I specifically wanted to take notes, but kept having weird shit happen lieatching on the page in class and globbing my page, nearly getting classmates, so I switched to a tablet + stylus combo for it. But these pens are definitely my favorite of any I've seen, even if there are better plunger fountain pens out there.

I am extremely satisfied with my Wingback fountain pen: https://wingback.co.uk/products/fountain-pen-brass

They are pricey, but very pleasant to use and I do not regret my purchase at all. I used a Lamy Safari before, but the problem there is that it's a click on cap, which means it's very likely not airtight, which means that the tip dries out. This one has seals on both the main compartment (since you can not use cartridges) but also the tip which means that even if you don't use it for months it instantly writes.

One downside due to its design is that it has no support for converters, which sucks a lot. But I just started reusing some cartridges with a fancy glass syringe from the 70s which I got used off ebay, and that works fine.

I have a few I like. The BIC extra bold (1.6mm) and the Papermate Profile (1.4mm) are at the top. I also love my Sakura Gelly Roll pens. No one can tell me any gel pens are better than those for writing.

For using on my art, though, the Micron PNs for outlining and the Uni ball Signo for the best white gel pen that doesn't pick up other colors.

I'm not too picky on what I write on, as long as it's lined, because I have the horrible habit of angling my writing. As for drawing, I prefer a thicker paper, especially if I'm doing watercolor art. 300 gsm or bust.

On ebay I got a cross brand pencil. Great brand, normally too expensive for me but 2nd hand it rules.

• Pilot G2 is my basic "minimum pen." I won't use anything less than that. (Throw cheap Papermates in the trash where they belong.)
• Uniball Air Micro was the rollerball I used a lot in college. It's very smooth, light, and has a nice feel, but I can only ever find them online.
• Pilot Precise V5 is the rollerball I tend to use the most, because they're available anywhere. I like the fine (and, well, precise) tip and the smoothness of the roller. It's not quite as smooth as the Uni, though.
• I also have a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen I like a lot, though I'm bad about letting it dry and not wanting to take the effort to clean and refill it. I got a ton of use out of it in college though. I'd usually start the week using that for notes, and fall back to rollerballs when it ran out, and refill it later when I had the time. It glides across the paper with more smoothness than a rollerball and has a heavy, premium feel that far exceeds its $15-20 price point.

The common denominator is they're all Japanese pens.

Edit: Forgot my favorite mechanical pencil. The Uniball Kuru Toga rotates the lead slightly every time you touch it to the paper, keeping a perfect point.

Lamy EF with some random black ink; Moleskine Notebooks and Cahier Journals.

I've never used a high quality pen but I swear by the Zebra F-301. Stands out enough that people give it back to you because it looks decently priced but cheap enough that I don't mind them walking away... Granted, I bought a 20 pack a decade ago and have enough survivors that I bought refills for them as well. Skillcraft Pens are also surprisingly robust. I've never had a pen get broken nearly in half and still write clearly but it does.

I've used various papers, from a Hobonichi Techo or Moleskin down to free notebooks from work and dollar store spiral bound and for the most part they all feel like paper to me. Yeah, some rip easier but I had to carry a writing board for my Techo because it's so thin, so there's trade offs.

I wish Hobonichi had an A5 sized Cousin that was just a notebook though. The dates cause me too much stress when I miss a few days and then have to pick it back up and skip a few pages of my already expensive notebook.

They should probably start paying me since I recommend them so often, but I really like the Rocket Book line of reusable notebooks. You use it like any other spiral notebook, but when you're done their app will scan your pages to your email or cloud storage, and then you wipe the pages clean with damp cloth and start over.

You get the digitization benefits of fancy e-ink tablets, but with the "it's not the end of the world if I lose this" price of a nice notebook.