Those who have used fountain pens for a while, or really any time at all, quickly come to the conclusion that there’s simply no good way to highlight documents written in anything other than an iron gall, waterproof, or registrar’s style ink, other than underlining with a brighter ink. In fact, Pelikan came out with a special 205 Duo pen and ink set just for this purpose – however at £140 RRP, it’s a bit out of a student’s typical budget, especially when compared to the typical highlighter. Even the ‘Executive’ STABILO Boss highlighter only has an RRP of £2.11.

But there are other options! First of all, as I’ll show, with a good pen/nib and ink combination, a normal highlighter can be used, and even if you’re deeply in love with the most ill behaved ink in the wettest of pens, with the broadest of nibs, there are definitely solutions out there.

So, without further ado, I’ll introduce you to the pens and inks, followed by the highlighters!

Left to right, we have –

‘Paper’ used for the tests was a stack of Silvine record cards, picked due to sturdiness, the fact that it’s an ‘OK’ performing cardstock (it can and does feather with some inks, but behaves fairly well normally), and the fact that I had a stack by me when I thought to do this project.

The highlighters!

Left column top to bottom, followed by the right side top to bottom:

All of these, bar the Multi8, were already in our family stationary stash. Why three types of dry highlighters? Well, one simple reason – bible paper doesn’t take well to liquid ink highlighting (or really, any abuse what so ever). In fact, a great place to grab dry highlighters is a good christian bookshop, although I’m sure other religions have such products too.

The fact that so many of these were already in our stash also speaks to why some of these just aren’t made any more. The FluArt pencils must be 15+ years old, and the Sanford one older. The Pentel 1.3mm pencils are still fairly easy to get hold of, but it appears that they are out of production too – which is fine for me, as I have a box of each colour. Which means I can give you the Pentel codes for easier hunting:

Blue – A13T-FS

Green – A13T-FK

Pink – A13T-FP

Yellow – Box missing

With that done, onto the main event.

All cards were written out first, and then once they were done, the highlighters were used – so all the ink was dry at the time of highlighting.

Baseline

Nothing much to comment on here, all fairly cheap inks, with the Mont Blanc Lavender topping out at £12.50 for 60ml, and the Waterman Black coming in as the cheapest at £5.99 for 50ml.

The colours are fairly accurate to indoor sunlight conditions, and it was scanned on an Epson Perfection V330 Photo.

Faber Castell Highlighter

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Smeared lots, still reasonable to read, but not pleasant on the page.

The Waterman Black – Smeared worse than the Mont Blanc, but still readable.

The Lamy Turquoise – Gave more of a blue hue to the highlighter, but it was noticeable.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – Streaked, not as bad as the Mont Blanc, but still leaving a definite red tone in the highlighting.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – With a Japanese fine nib and this ink, there seems to be no problems at all. The writing is perfectly clear to read.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – Some, but minimal, smear, and still readable.

This is what I expected really, although the scan actually seems to minimise the smearing. It’s a wet, fibre tip, highlighter. It was a bit of a surprise that the J.Herbin ink survived so well, but it may be due to how dry and fine the nib of the Pilot Metro is.

Kokuyo Beetle Tip 3-Way Highlighter

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Again, smearing when the big highlighter tip is used, but none to minimal when the underline and under-over-line tip positions are used.

The Waterman Black – As soon as the highlighter tip touches one of those black letters, it’s game over, as the black ink goes everywhere. Readable, but not adviseable.

The Lamy Turquoise – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – Some smearing, giving a definite tint to the highlighting.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – Some smearing, but only noticeable if you’re looking for it.

Once again, no surprise, it’s a wet tip highlighter. However, the cool function is that not only can the tip of this pen be used as both a broad stroke and a narrow nib like most highlighters, but they’ve designed the nib specifically to allow you to use a twin nib to both under and over line the text with the same swipe of the pen (as shown on the cult pens page as my hand is nowhere near steady enough for macro photography) . While this pen isn’t great with fountain pens, it may be useful in textbooks, printouts, and other paperwork that amasses.

Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pen Neon

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Some, limited, blurring and tinting of the highlighter, but barely perceivable.

The Waterman Black – Lots of bleed if the black into the highlighter, really dirtying up the highlighter colour.

The Lamy Turquoise – Definitely some bleed into the highlighter colour, most noticeable in the pink and orange here.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – No issues at all.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – Appears to have been obfuscated by the highlighter colouring, and it’s actually making it harder to read – however the ink hasn’t run.

Another liquid fibre tip (although a fineliner tip) pen, giving similar results to the others, it would allow shading around text (depending on how big you write), although I don’t think these work particularly well.

Staedtler TextSurfer Gel Highlighter

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Smeared a bit under the orange, and left a slight purple tint in the yellow, but perfectly readable.

The Waterman Black – Smeared badly in the orange, a small amount in the yellow, but still readable in both.

The Lamy Turquoise – Smeared in the orange, but perfectly fine in the yellow.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – Smeared in both the yellow and the orange, but still readable in both.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – No issues at all.

These are waxy highlighters that are fairly good in most cases for highlighting, and don’t cause inkjet printed text to smear, but have two downfalls for fountain pen users – first of all, they smear on a fair number of inks (although I still fairly happily use them), and secondly, their waxy consistency makes it entirely impossible to write over a highlighted area with a water based ink.

Gel Pens

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Obfuscated by the gel, but no smear and still readable.

The Waterman Black – Obfuscated by the gel, but no smear and still readable.

The Lamy Turquoise – Obfuscated by the gel, but no smear and still readable.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – Obfuscated by the gel, but no smear and still readable.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – Obfuscated by the gel, but no smear and still readable.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – Obfuscated by the gel, but no smear and still readable.

While scribbling over the text highlighted it fairly well, without smearing it, it drastically affected how readable the text is, most notably on the Lamy Turquoise and the Alt-Goldgrun. Definitely a possible option due, in part, to how cheap these pens are (I picked up boxes of 12 of these pens at a £1 store), but the effect overall grates on me.

Sanford Accent Dry Pencil

The Mont Blanc Lavender – No issues at all.

The Waterman Black – No issues at all.

The Lamy Turquoise – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – No issues at all.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – No issues at all.

While not the brightest colour, this gave a good colour, easy coverage, and didn’t leave a waxy residue. Sadly Sanford seem to have dropped this line entirely in favour of really pushing the Sharpie product line (and who can blame them). I really liked the chunkiness of this pencil, and how easy it was to get new leads (some are still floating around on Amazon).

Lyra FluArt Pencils

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Obscured by the brightness and the pigmentation of the pink pencil (although the affect seems to have been made worse in the scanning process), otherwise no issues.

The Waterman Black – No issues at all.

The Lamy Turquoise – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – Again issues with the ink toning nicely with the highlighter pencil, but still readable.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – No issues at all.

Well, with my liking of pink and purple inks, this was bound to come up – with various coloured inks, some of them just aren’t going to play well with highlighter colours. This might not be an issue if, like me, your text is written in different colours to point out cases etc anyway, or it may just mean you pick your colours for highlighting a bit more carefully.

Otherwise, these highlighter pencils are perfect. Apart from being out of production, and looking perfect for any 90’s teen’s pencil case. Luckily, Lyra have toned it down with their latest offering, with a natural wood look. However I can’t comment on if they happen to be as good as the old pencils, but I hope they are.

Pentel Fluorescent Automatic Pencils 1.3mm

The Mont Blanc Lavender – No issues at all.

The Waterman Black – No issues at all.

The Lamy Turquoise – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – No issues at all.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – No issues at all.

Not as vibrant as the Lyra offering, but still giving a good colour and the finer lead is nice for those who have smaller writing, and who might want to write notes, underline, or use symbols in the same colour scheme. I can certainly see them being useful for literature students, for example.

As I said earlier, the Pentel 1.3mm pencils are still fairly easy to get hold of, but it appears that they are out of production too – which is fine for me, as I have a box of each colour. Which means I can give you the Pentel codes for easier hunting:

Blue – A13T-FS

Green – A13T-FK

Pink – A13T-FP

Yellow – Box missing

Pentel Multi8 2mm Pencil

The Mont Blanc Lavender – No issues at all.

The Waterman Black – No issues at all.

The Lamy Turquoise – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – No issues at all.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – No issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – No issues at all.

This, quite frankly, is the new toy. It’s a beast in size, not only due to it holding 2mm leads, replacing the 1.3mm in Pentel’s older lineup, this actually holds EIGHT different individually selectable leads, including ones that won’t be visible to older black and white copiers, or Diazo machines.

The pigment is brighter than the older 1.3mm pencils, but due to the difficulty of getting my hands on the fluorescent leads at anything nearing a reasonable price (£10 per two leads is not reasonable, even when being imported), I couldn’t do a like-for-like test, as I would have liked to.

I’d love for Pentel to bring this out in the UK market, as it’s a great product, and with the ability to even put in biro cartridges to make this a pen, it’s simply a great tool that’s been well thought out, well packaged, and is easy and fun to use.

Page Markers

The Mont Blanc Lavender – Obfuscated a bit, but otherwise no issues at all.

The Waterman Black – Obfuscated a bit, but otherwise no issues at all.

The Lamy Turquoise – Obfuscated a bit, but otherwise no issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Solferino – Obfuscated a bit, but otherwise no issues at all.

The J. Herbin Violet Pensee – Obfuscated a bit, but otherwise no issues at all.

The Roher & Klingner Alt Goldgrun – Obfuscated a bit, but otherwise no issues at all.

Yes, this is a bit crazy, and takes some work with a pair of scissors, but I’ve done this before and had a reason for my madness (apart from an urge to dive into a craft project). This is far brighter and bolder than the other options, gives a long lasting colour, allows for repeatable shaping of the highlighting, and most importantly for those of us who hate scarring books, entirely removable.

The down sides are fairly obvious – it takes a hell of a lot longer, the glue might still damage a delicate book (it’s unlikely to be archival quality glue), and if you feel like doing it on written text rather than printed, it can have an effect on readability if you happen to use the wrong colour, or use a fine nib or light ink as can be seen with the J.Herbin ink.

Conclusion

Some of what I’ve seen is obvious – inks smear when wet highlighters are scribbled over them. Nothing new there. But what was interesting is that some inks (most notably The J. Herbin’s Violet Pensee and The Roher & Klingner’s Alt Goldgrun) can take quite a lot of abuse.

I also hope I’ve shown you some different options for highlighting when using fountain pens, so you don’t think all is lost when revision time hits, or you start collage or university and suddenly have to distill pages of textbooks, lecture notes, handouts, and more on a weekly basis.

Please comment, share, or email me if you want to know more.