When was the last time, dear reader, you used a pencil? It is highly likely that a pencil is used only sparingly even if you are someone who writes a lot. Cruciverbalists, artists and avid book readers are some who use pencils, I think. Yet I’ve noticed pencils have something that draws attention, unlike pens, when flaunted in one’s hand or pocket, or on a desk.
What is that quality a pencil one flaunts has and why does it draw attention? Some anecdotes might help clarify my assertion. Some important TV/video presenters flaunt expensive pens which, I think, they rarely use. But why do some anchors/TV presenters (Colin Jost & Michael Che1 and sometimes Karan Thapar are examples) flaunt a pencil—pencil—when they’re hardly seen using it? Do they use it outside the interview time? If it is symbolic, what is the symbolism all about? (I don’t think they use it at all because the pencils they display are always full length, never been used.
Clearly they are for flaunting.) Daniel Kahnemann’s book Thinking, fast and slow has a picture half-used, bite-marked pencil on its cover that (apparently) has been used to draw the scrawl featured along with it. Would a pen on the cover have the same effect? Does flaunting a humble pencil make a difference that flaunting a pen, even an expensive one, cannot? The first time the humble pencil got my attention back in 1970s was when my sister insisted on using a particular type of pencil for shorthand writing practice: Koh-i-Noor penc.