Classification by Shape & Structure

Pencils are categorized into three forms: natural wooden barrel pencils, pre-sharpened pencils, and capped pencils.

Standard wooden barrel pencils are manufactured by embedding lead cores inside wooden barrels. Users need to sharpen the tip before use. Most standard pencils come with a small rubber eraser attached to the rear end. When writing mistakes occur, users can flip the pencil to erase marks conveniently. This design was invented by American painter Alonso Townsend Cross.

Pre-sharpened pencils are semi-finished pencils whose wooden barrels are pre-processed with exposed sharpened lead tips for direct sales.

Capped pencils consist of two parts: a pencil barrel and a protective pencil cap.

1. Wooden Barrel Pencils (Traditional Wood Pencils)

Lead cores are fully wrapped with solid wood; sharpening via pencil sharpeners or craft knives is required before use.

(1) Standard writing pencils: mainly HB and 2B, for students’ daily note-taking and exam answer sheet filling.

(2) Wooden colored pencils: oil-based colored pencils and water-soluble colored pencils for painting and coloring.

(3) Special wooden pencils: triangular grip-correction pencils, hexagonal roll-resistant pencils, unpainted natural eco-friendly wooden pencils.

2. Mechanical Pencils

No sharpening required; thin lead refills extend out by pressing, matched with replaceable lead refills.

Classified by lead diameter: 0.3mm, 0.5mm (most widely used), 0.7mm, 0.9mm, and thick 2.0mm leads for hand drawing.

Sub-types: click-action, twist-action, shake-to-feed, auto-retract break-resistant models, compatible with nano lead refills and standard resin lead refills.

3. Special Wood-Free Pencils

Paper-wrapped pencils (compressed recycled waste paper, eco-friendly and biodegradable), plastic barrel pencils, charcoal sticks, carbon drawing sticks.