Pen

A pen (Latin penna, feather) is a device used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used, with a nib dipped in the ink. Ruling pens allow precise adjustment of line width, and still find a few specialized uses, but technical pens such as the Rapidograph are more commonly used. Modern types also include ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt or ceramic tip pens.

Famous quotes containing the word pen:

“Here is a pen and here is a pencil,
Here’s a typewriter, here’s a stencil,
Here is a list of today’s appointments,
And all the flies in all the ointments,
The daily woes that a man endures—
Take them, George, they’re yours!”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)

“I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances—from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer’s pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)

“Its whether will ye be a rank robber’s wife,
Or will ye die by my wee pen knife?

Its I’ll not be a rank robber’s wife,
But I’ll rather die by your wee pen knife.

He ‘s killed this may and he ‘s laid her by,
For to bear the red rose company.”
—Unknown. Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o’ Fordie (l. 9–14)