Barack Obama, no stranger to controversy, waded into an extraordinarily contentious area of American life on Wednesday when he revealed his pen preferences. The former president told the New York Times that when composing longform writing, including his recent book
A Promised Land, he prefers to sketch out his first drafts by hand, rather than on a computer. What’s more, like all true stationery nerds, Obama is “very particular” about his writing tools, preferring the combination of yellow legal pad and black Uni-ball Vision Elite rollerball pen with a micro-point.
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When it comes to paper, Obama could do better. Sure, he was a law professor, and old habits die hard but your basic legal pad tends to be made from low-quality, highly porous paper, which soaks up ink, potentially blurring the precision of the former president’s aperçus. Pairing that paper with a fine-tipped rollerball should minimize bleed-through and feathering, though, so his favorite writing