Erasable Pens Buying Guide

There are a lot of different erasable pens available, and some of them can be a bit confusing. If you’re old enough to remember erasable pens from many years ago, you might not know how much they’ve improved - they used to be worse to write with than other pens, and usually didn’t erase very well either. Things are way better now, with nice smooth-writing pens, that erase cleanly and easily. But they come with some twists to be aware of.

And the obvious thing to keep in mind - don’t forget you’re using an erasable pen and use it for something like a cheque or important paperwork that shouldn’t be altered.

Why Not Pencils?

Let’s address the elephant in the room first. Pencils. Why not just use a pencil if you want to be able to erase? Honestly, a lot of the time, a pencil might be your best bet. They’re very permanent unless you intentionally erase them, and they’re easy to erase when you do want the marks gone. We love pencils.

But you might just prefer writing with a pen, and sometimes it just doesn’t look right to be writing with a pencil. In some environments, using a pencil might look too childish. Not to us, to be clear, we use pencils a lot, but some people can be weird.

Unless you’re in a situation where pencil wouldn’t really work, they’re still a very good solution - and a nice-looking mechanical pencil might solve some of the problems - if it’s just about having something that looks the part in meetings, for example.

Erasable Pens of Old

Those of you as old as some of us are might remember old erasable pens. They were like ballpoints, but the ink just felt weirdly sticky, and not so nice to write with. And they did erase, but it took a bit of work to get the ink to go away.

Before even those, there were some early attempts at pens that actually wrote with graphite, the same as a pencil, but they never really caught on.

These types are very rarely seen these days - we’re not too sorry to see them go. We really try to love all pens, but some are harder to love than others.

Thermo-reactive Ink Pens

This is the most common type of erasable pens seen around these days, pioneered by the Pilot Frixion. They’re also available from other brands now, including Uni-ball and Legami. They generally write very nicely, and erase easily.

The really clever part is how they work. The ink doesn’t really go anywhere when it’s erased. They’ve used ink that changes colour with temperature, and the colour it changes to when it gets hot is clear. The ‘eraser’ on the end of the pen is actually plastic, not rubber, so it doesn’t wear down like a normal eraser would - it’s not rubbing the ink away, it just generates heat by friction when you rub. It doesn’t sound like it would work well, you’d think you’d have to rub a lot to make that much heat, but it’s surprisingly quick and easy.

Accidental Erasure

So the ink erases when it gets hot. But what if your notes accidentally get too hot? It can happen, so it’s a risk to keep in mind. We’ve heard cases of notes left in a hot car that have got so hot they disappeared.

But in that case, all may not be lost…

Bringing it Back

If heat makes it vanish, can cold bring it back? It actually can! If you’re in this situation, with thermo-reactive ink, if you put your notes in the freezer, they should come back. They’ll be a bit faint, and may not look great, but they should be readable enough.

Sending Secret Notes to Your Penguin Army

So, just hypothetically, if you had an army of penguins, ready to do your bidding, could you send them invisible notes with your instructions, using one of these pens? Yes! If the instructions for taking over the world (just an example) are detailed, we’d recommend using an iron to bulk erase them. By time they reach the penguins’ icy lair, they should reappear, and your plans are good to go!

We, er, haven’t tested this. It’s just hypothetical.

(If you’re wondering why we aren’t supreme rulers of the world, let’s just say that penguins don’t make the most effective minions. Hypothetically.)

Eradicable Ink Fountain Pens

These are sometimes called ‘erasable’, but to those who don’t already know how they work, it may seem to be stretching the word beyond its usual limits.

The other term often seen for this type of ink is ‘washable’. In any case, it usually refers to fountain pen ink that won’t be too hard to wash out of clothes, but especially when the term ‘eradicable’ is used, it more specifically means ink that can be removed with an ‘ink eradicator’. This is a felt-tip pen filled with very mild bleach. Use it over the right type of fountain pen ink, and the ink is erased.

There’s an extra twist, though - once erased, there’s mild bleach on the paper, so the same fountain pen ink would just disappear again when you try to write over the mistake. So these ink eradicator pens usually have a second end, with ink that won’t be erased by the same mild bleach.

If that all sounds a bit fiddly, it is - but if you want to use a fountain pen, and to be able to erase, it works. The down sides are that you have to carry the ink eradicator too, you can only erase and write over once, and the writing from the other end of the eradicator pen won’t perfectly match the writing with the fountain pen, so while your mistake may be gone, the fact that you made one may still be noticeable.