What Is the Difference Between Roller Point & Ball Point Pens?
While the ballpoint pen remains the best-selling type of pen in the United States, roller ball pens are steadily gaining in popularity for many reasons. The roller ball may never take the sales lead on the ballpoint because they tend to cost more, but serious writers often keep a supply of roller ball pens in stock and shun the old reliable ballpoint.
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Type of Ink
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Where ballpoint pens use a highly viscous, oil-based ink with a consistency similar to molasses in their cartridges and refills, roller ball pens rely on thin, water-based ink with a consistency similar to that of water.
Pen Style
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Because of the thin consistency of a roller ball pen’s water-based ink, the cartridges and refills tend to dry out easily and therefore most styles require capping, though some of the pricier roller ball pens have solved this problem with high-tech ink distribution. With ballpoint pens, the ink will not evaporate, so a cap is not required and several styles have “click” or “twist” mechanisms to retract the pen tip when not in use.
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Writing
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Lower-quality ballpoint pens often leave blobs of ink on the page or may skip, leaving blank areas when the pen is moved too quickly across the page. Roller ball pens distribute ink more evenly and will not produce blobs or skips; however, because of the low viscosity of the ink, if the pen point remains in one place, ink will soak into the paper at that spot, leaving an inkblot.
Sensation
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Many people find roller ball pens glide across paper more smoothly than ballpoint pens, which may have a scratchy feel against the page.
Smearing
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Ballpoint ink is oil-based and dries on contact, and therefore will not usually smear, unless it deposits an ink blob on the page. The water-based ink of the roller ball pen, while it dries quickly (within a few seconds), can smear. This presents a particular problem for left-handed writers, whose hands must pass over freshly printed words.
Running Ink
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The oil-based ink of a ballpoint pen should not run, even if the document becomes wet. However, water-based ink—such as that used in roller ball or fountain pens—will run if the page becomes wet, leaving the writing illegible in many cases.
Refills
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The cartridges of oil-based ink used in ballpoint pens last for a long time, as the ball distributes very little ink onto the page during writing. Water-based ink cartridges go through ink more quickly, partly because the ball distributes comparatively more ink, but also because the cartridge ink tends to evaporate while the pen is in use. Because of this, roller ball pens go through refill cartridges more quickly than ballpoint pens.
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References
- Photo Credit pen ballpooint image by Pali A from Fotolia.com
