Top Ten Reasons Why Mechanical Pencils Are Better Than Wood Pencils

The Top Ten

1 Wood Pencils Will Eventually Run Out, but Mechanical Pencils are Reusable

I love mechanical pencil! Never spend time to sharpen wooden pencil! - InfernoTopTenners

I've tried to use a mechanical pencil before. Sadly, as an artist, they are cheap and useless. Also, "reusable"? What if you run out of lead? Lead is very rare to buy as a standalone stick. Although wood pencils run out, you can make them last by not constantly wearing them down. - Swellow

The lead helps a lot! - BlueTopazIceVanilla

2 Mechanical Pencils Make a Satisfying 'Click!' Sound

Click click clicky click click!

So? It's better to see hard and completed work using a wooden pencil than messy writings and clicking your mechanical pencil

Haha, just because they make a sound doesn't mean they are better. - Swellow

This may be a weird reason, but trust me, better ones will come. - BlueTopazIceVanilla

3 Wood Pencils Tend to Be More Expensive

Actually, Mechanical pencils cost about $.25 each, whereas wooden pencils cost about $.08 each, and even less.

I only use mechanical pencils to write. - cosmo

I agree.

4 Wood Pencils Have Messy Shavings

It's so annoying to have to go to the trash can to throw away your pencil shavings in the middle of doing something!

Just buy one with an inside bin, or better yet have a bin next to you. - Swellow

5 Mechanical Pencils are More Technologically Advanced Than Wood Pencils

This is the best reason. I love technology. - RockFashionista

I'm not even going to bother saying anything about this item. - Swellow

True! Even the word 'mechanical' at the front should tell you it's better. - BlueTopazIceVanilla

6 Cheap Wood Pencils Don't Work Good, but Cheap Mechanical Pencils Do Work Good

I hate it when you get that one decorative pencil, but it is just wood with plastic wrapped around it. Then when you try to sharpen it, it just keeps breaking and breaking, until finally you end up with a stub. - BlueTopazIceVanilla

My wooden pencils always break. Mechanical pencils are reliable. - Kaboom

Actually, they don't. The points on the mechanical pencils break off easily, and the erasers are a pain. - RiverClanRocks

I know! Those mechanical pencils are crap. Buy the ones where you have to remove the top, NOT the ones where you have to remove the eraser. And if you write too hard, get a mechanical and lead with more thickness. - BlueTopazIceVanilla

7 Mechanical Pencils Make Writing and Drawing Easier

Mechanical pencils: worst drawing tool ever

Especially if you're a lefty and wood pencils make everything smear all over the place. (I speak from personal experience.) - RockFashionista

Using a mechanical pencil to draw was a disaster. Since then, I have always stuck to Faber-Castell wood pencils. So what if they smudge? They don't break as easily. - Swellow

*harder.

8 You Don't Need to Sharpen Mechanical Pencils

This is the best part. I especially hate if I'm hand-writing a paragraph and you can clearly see where I've sharpened my pencil because it just gets continuously messy... - keycha1n

You still have to replace the nibs off mechanical pencils. - Swellow

Agree,my pencil get short very fast. - SamuiNeko

9 Mechanical Pencils Have Different Types of Lead

So do wood pencils. You have the H pencils and B pencils. - Swellow

0.5, 0.7, 1.2, just to name a few. But my favorite one is 0.7, it's not too thick and not too thin. - BlueTopazIceVanilla

If you're one of those people that write to hard, then get lead (and a mecchanical pencil) with more thickness. - BlueTopazIceVanilla

10 You Don't Kill Trees with Mechanical Pencils.

But packets of lead are plastic and when you throw them away and not recycle them you're polluting our planet

Plastic mechanical pencils can easily be sharpened. Why bother killing trees?

Well, that's true. Also, paper is made of trees though so I don't need to waste.

true

The Contenders

11 When You Buy Mechanical Pencils They Come With Free Grippers

Yeah, this makes it way more comfortable to write.

12 Can Store Multiple Pieces of Graphite, Wooden Pencils Can't Do That!

Wooden pencils only have one long piece of graphite through the wood but, the skinny pieces of graphite inside the mechanical pencil would end up having more graphite in it.

True, true very true

13 More Professional Looking Writing
14 Wood Pencils Smear All Over the Paper, but Mechanical Pencils Rarely Do

Mainly because people don't use them right. If you slowly use them, they don't smudge. - Swellow

15 Mechanical Pencils Have a Sharper Point for Detailed Work
16 They Make You Look Fancy
17 Your Hands Do Not Hurt

Wood pencils make my hands but mechancils do not.

nope

18 Do Not Kill Trees

It is good so you don't kill trees

19 They Make Sketching Easier

Mechanical pencils don't have as many options when it comes to the type of graphite and if they did, they would be more expensive or I would have to keep switching out pieces of graphite every time I wanted to shade a different area. Wooden pencils make life a bit easier in terms of shading and it's fun to sharped them with x-acto blades. I also can buy them in sets of graphite types, 6b, 4b, 2b, h, hb, f, 2h, 4h, etc. (I do have a mechanical pencil but it's not very good for artwork or sketching since there's only 2b graphite. Finding more types of graphite is time consuming and getting more pencils becomes expensive.) So, a vote for the wooden pencil.

20 The grippers work as erasers
21 You Can Have Adjustable or Different Sized Leads
22 Mechanical Pencils are Special
23 Mechanical Pencils are Tiny So They are Very Easy to Carry Everywhere
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