Sometimes when writing with a ballpoint pen midword or mid-sentence the pen stops writing momentarily. If you pick up the pen start on a different section of paper it seems to correct itself immediately but if you go back to that original section it still won’t write. Is this a pen issue or a paper issue? I’m over 50 and I’ve believe I know how to use a pen, but this issue has been present as long as I can remember.
In: Other
The ball of the pen is hard steel (edit: or tungsten carbide, brass, etc.. Point is it’s way harder than paper). Zoomed way in, the paper surface is fuzzy. The ball is gripped by the fuzzy surface enough so that it rolls rather than slides, putting down ink as it rolls.
When the pen “fails” the ball gets jammed and is dragged across the surface without rolling. This creates a smooth hardened packed down “channel” or trough in the paper surface. You can scribble elsewhere and get the ball rolling again on fresh paper, but when you come back to the failure area, the paper surface is already compacted and smoothed out by the dragging ball during the failure. So it has less grip on the ball than fresh fuzzy paper surface. This often results in the ball dragging across this area once again. And the more it happens the surface just gets more and more smooth and compacted so it’s self-worsening once the process begins.
Source: copied from [my own previous answer here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/s/nr9Km6Cizi)
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