agreed....................0.7 just seems too much like a worn out pencil that needs sharpened................ course i guess for bubble sheet work bigger is better??
I tend to press down too hard when writing, and the .5mm breaks more often than the .7mm, so .7mm is my typical load.
i also press hard and tend to break .5mm lead, but the Pentel Kerry mechanical pencil (and others with the same tip, such as drafting mechanical pencils) really cut this down.
I use .3 mm, as I do a lot of copy editing and writing in pocket-size notebooks. I order extra-fine nibs for my fountain pens, too, which can be a challenge!
.5mm for me. It always felt like I was writing with an unsharpened pencil with the 0.7mm. I didn't know there was other sizes, but I'm not an architech or artist either. I just buy whatever is available at Wal-Mart.
I've used mechanical pencils since high school, when I stopped losing them. Never did like wood pencils. I like the larger leads because I tend to push down and break anything smaller than .5 mm. .7 mm is actuall a bit small for me - I prefer the .9mm even though they are hard to find. My favorite pencil is a Faber Castell pencil with a 1.1 mm lead. It's shaped like a cigar, and feels wonderful in the hand. I think best with a pen or pencil in my hand, and the weight of the lead gives weight to my ideas.
I have more than my fair share of mechanical pencils in .5, .7, and .9. But, I have never tried any of the larger offerings. These 3 sizes suit me just fine. I have owned a Pentel Quicker Clicker in .5 and a Pentel Model "5" since middle school.
Back when I used a mechanical pencil regularly, I preferred 0.5mm over 0.7mm. My handwriting is messy enough that 0.7mm makes it even harder for me to read.
I use both a .5mm and a .9mm alot. The .5mm is used for all general writing purposes, and I use a couple of .9mm pencils, one with red lead for making corrections, and one with blue lead for personal notes that I make on prints this way if somebody makes a copy of this print my personal notes don't go with the copy. I also have two pencils that have 6mm lead, one has yellow lead for highlighting, and one with regular lead for doodleing. Chuck
When I was in college and taking different programing languages we had to turn in hand written coding sheets also, and they had tiny squares for each letter. I started using 5MM then and ever since anything larger feels wrong. I broke a lot of lead until I found the cushioned tip Colormatics pencil and now that is all I use.
Well, it all depends on what I'm doing. If I'm just writing, or taking a ScanTron test, then I'm using .5mm in 2H hardness. If I'm doing any kind of technical drafting/drawing, then it's .9mm or 2mm for me. The great thing about 2mm is you can sharpen it, or chisel point it with a piece of sandpaper. The nice thing about .5mm is that you can get vanish point pencils, which are totally awesome if you hate getting lead in your shirt pockets... on the other hand, that's why I have a pocket protector... I know, I know...it's incredibly nerdy of me...but my non-EMS alter ego is an engineer, so I can't really get away from it.
Ditto what others said about .7mm... .5mm breaks too easily on me. The Pentel P207 -- used that model and the corresponding .5mm, .3mm, and .9mm since 1990 (took 12 hours of drafting then)... I also tend to use "B" hardness...HB is ok, but anything harder I don't like for just writing and taking notes. I have a couple of 2mm ones and a sharpener I should probably bring to work. I like 2mm also. JM-99
I always thought I needed .7 lead, because my .5 broke all of the time, but I found out that I needed a skinnier pencil rather than one of the fat ones, that made me think I could press harder. I love the black, Pentel .5mm pencils.
I used .3mm when I was in school and writing small, dainty math equations. Takes a while to get the right touch, otherwise every other stroke will break the lead. .5mm for everything else, mostly because that's what I'd been using forever. No more pencils nowadays, but for my checkbook I use a pen that writes as thin as or thinner than .3mm.
