While I’ve always liked doing a lot of my notes and writing with pen and ink, I’ve never been particularly well-versed in the latest innovations and trends in the handwriting world. But! I know this is exactly the sort of endeavor that attracts nerds, and that my network of friends and acquaintances would be well-versed in what the best options are.

So, I asked my Twitter followers for pen recommendations that would best meet my predilections. Here are their responses:

Some early trends jump out — 10 recommend a Pilot pen of some sort, and 8 mention Uni-Ball. The zebra, signo, and pentel all have vocal advocates. And what’s clear to me is that I’ll just have to buy a few different ones and try them out, but at least my friends have helped narrow down the selection. Because obviously, the thing that’s keeping me from updating this blog more often is that I don’t have the right pen.

The other improvement to my recording tools that I’ve been looking for is shown by the contents of this post itself; The latest versions of ThinkUp have progressed enormously, and doing fun stuff like embedding a list of replies (in this case, sorted by friends first, and then by number of followers) is really easy to do with just a click.

I know the old trope is that the answer to productivity is never a new tool, but sometimes there are tools that let us do things that would be a total pain in the ass otherwise. It’s nice to have friends to help solve that problem.