[  Reference Info Index  ]

Like any other specialized item, the fountain pen has amassed a lexicon of terms that are unique. And like other jargon languages, fountain pen jargon can be cryptic or confusing. This glossary presents brief definitions for many of the most common pen terms. It is not complete (an impossible goal); but it is a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions for terms to add. (Revised May 10, 2008)

The glossary is organized alphabetically. For numbers, look under the spelled-out form; e.g., for 14K, look under fourteen.

S
sac	A flexible rubber or silicone plastic ink reservoir, tubular and closed at one end. The open end is attached to the gripping section, usually with an adhesive such as shellac. Most sacs are plain cylinders, but some are necked down at the opening, and a few are tapered to make better use of the space within a tapered barrel. Illustrated here are several sacs for different pen models; the parts in the bottom row are a Vacumatic diaphragm (left) and a sac for Waterman’s Ink-Vue filler.
sac guard	(also sac protector) A rigid protective tube that encloses a sac to protect it in squeeze- and pneumatic-filling pens. Shown here are sac guards in an Aero-metric Parker “51” and a Sheaffer’s Touchdown.
sac section	A small rubber part, within the mechanism of a Sheaffer’s Snorkel, onto which the Snorkel tube, sac, and sac guard are mounted. The sac section, illustrated here with the Snorkel tube in place, might be considered the vestigial remains of an ordinary pen’s gripping section. See also gripping section, Snorkel.
sacless	A pen that has no sac; includes pens with capillary, cartridge, eyedropper, piston, plunger, and syringe fillers. Bulb fillers and their direct descendants (Ink-Vue and Vacumatic) have no sacs in the usual sense and are called sacless on the basis of this technicality, but they do have flexible rubber parts in direct contact with ink. View descriptions and filling instructions here.
safety	Term applied to pens whose design reduces or eliminates the possibility of leakage in the user’s pocket or purse. Safety designs arose in the early part of the 20th century, when most pens were made of hard rubber and had a slip-fitting cap that was (more or less) secured by friction. Retractable nibs and screw-on caps were common safety features; the Waterman’s pen shown here has both of these features. Pens with an aperture in the barrel, such as lever fillers, are inherently “unsafe” because they contain a sac that can split or burst and leak through the aperture. See also Continental, retractable nib, screw cap. Read a discussion here about safety pens and how they work.
Safety Ink Shut Off	Wahl-Eversharp’s name for the clever shutoff device it introduced in the late 1930s (illustrated here; note the metal tab protruding from the section). When the user capped the pen, the inner cap pressed on the tab to close the shutoff. Early units had steel springs that corroded rapidly in the presence of acidic ink; Wahl-Eversharp corrected this problem by using a spring made of gold alloy, but in practice the device was found not to work well, if at all. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission prohibited the Wahl-Eversharp from advertising it, and the company withdrew it from production. See also shutoff.
Safety-Sealed	Parker’s name for the design of its button-filling pens produced beginning in 1912, sealed against leakage in the user’s pocket by the barrel-end blind cap and by a well-fitted cone cap that lacked breather holes. Below is a Safety-Sealed pen, shown capped, posted, and with both caps removed.
sautoir	(French for “long necklace,” pronounced so-TWAR; also guard, lanyard) A long necklace, often made of silk grosgrain ribbon, to which a ringtop pen is attached by means of a clasp that is part of the sautoir. Shown below is a Sheaffer’s Nº 2 Self-Filler on a sautoir from the same period. See also chatelaine, ringtop.
Schnell	1  The Julius L. Schnell Pen Company. See also combo, Penselpen.  2  The filling system used by Schnell pens, a “shift” system. A metal tab, resembling a lever, slides lengthwise in a barrel slot to depress the pressure bar. Lifting the tab as if it were a lever will destroy it.
school pen	(also student pen) An inexpensive pen designed to be used by school students. Shown here are a Sheaffer cartridge-filling school pen from the 1960s (essentially a scaled-down adult pen) and a modern Lamy abc pen (a purpose-built model used in Europe, not sold in the U.S.A.).
scratchy	A term describing a nib that does not write smoothly. Scratchiness can result from misalignment of the tines, missing or pitted iridium, or wear.
screw cap	(also threaded cap) A cap that screws onto the body of the pen to protect the nib and to prevent evaporation of the ink. Screw caps evolved shortly after 1910 and are much more reliable than the slip caps that preceded them. See also slip cap.
SE	See special edition.
Seas	A series of cartridge/converter pens made by Sheaffer for Levenger, produced in transparent colors such as blue, green, yellow, and violet. Seas pens have appeared in two versions, the first identical to the Sheaffer Connaisseur and the second a slight variant identifiable by its use of a washer clip instead of the original Sheaffer-style tab-mounted clip. Shown below is the first-version Mediterranean model, in blue. See also Connaisseur.
Secretary pen	A full-sized flat-top pen made by Sheaffer, colored brilliant red to distinguish it (according to Sheaffer’s advertising) from the boss’s pen. Produced beginning in 1922 in casein, the Secretary migrated in 1924 to celluloid along with the rest of Sheaffer’s line. Fitted with a Nº 7 nib instead of the Nº 8 used in the same-sized Lifetime pen, the Secretary sold for $1.00 less than the Lifetime.
second tier	Term applied to a pen of moderate or high quality from one of the lesser manufacturers. Also applied to a manufacturer of such pens. Among the second tier of U.S. manufacturers were companies such as Aikin Lambert, Chilton, Moore, and Morrison. See also first tier, third tier.
section	See gripping section, sac section.
Security	A pen manufactured during the early 20th century by the Securograph Pen Company. Security pens include a special device for preventing check fraud, a toothed roller (called a check protector) that is concealed under the top of the cap (shown below). This roller runs in a small pad of red ink, and rolling it over the writing on a check cuts tiny slits in the paper, impregnating the fibers with the red ink as it does so.
self filler	Any pen that fills by means of a built-in (i.e., non-removable) filling system. The term appeared with the advent of such pens at the end of the 19th century, as a means to distinguish them from “regular” pens (eyedropper fillers). See also cartridge/converter, filler.
Self-Fitting Point	See adjustable nib.
service pen	(also loaner) A pen produced for sale to dealers and repair stations, to be lent to customers whose pens required repairs that could not be performed while their owners waited. The Sheaffer Balance illustrated here is immediately identifiable as a service pen because Sheaffer never offered a Balance to the public in plain bright red. Not all service pens are recognizable by their color, however, and service pens were engraved to identify them; this one bears the legend SERVICE PEN LOANED BY A. LA ROCHELLE.
service set	A pen and pencil set provided with a case suitable for carrying on the belt (or in the pocket); so named because of its convenience for military personnel but not actually produced for, or procured by, the U.S. military establishment. The term may be the source of the misconception that Morrison’s Patriot (crestless Navy set shown below) was made to conform to military regulations.
750	A designation indicating an alloy that contains 750 parts of gold, by weight, per 1000 parts of the total metal content. The same as 18K.
1750	See Sheaffer numbers.
75	A pen model introduced by Parker in 1963. Produced in myriad variations, and arguably the most collectible pen from the latter half of the 20th century, the 75 is noted for its writing qualities and for its user-interchangeable adjustable nib unit. See also adjustable nib (definition 2) and VP.
shading	1  (also shaded writing) Term for writing with line variation; used by Esterbrook to describe the intended use of its flexible nibs (x048, x788).  2  Variation in color depth and saturation due to uneven application of ink to the paper as the pen moves more or less rapidly and in changing directions.
Sheaffer	A pen manufacturing company located in Fort Madison, Iowa. Founded in 1912 by Walter A. Sheaffer, a jeweler, to produce pens using his revolutionary lever filling system, patented in 1908 (U.S. Patent Nº 896,861). Sheaffer continued to innovate and is known for bringing to market the first widely successful plastic (celluloid) pens in 1924. Among the company’s notable pens have been the Balance, the “TRIUMPH”, the Snorkel and PFM, and the Targa. Now a subsidiary of BiC, the company continues to produces excellent pens, of which the most recent at this writing is the Valor (2006, shown below). See also BiC, first tier.
Sheaffer numbers	Numbers included as the last line of the barrel imprint on Sheaffer pens and pencils to indicate the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). These numbers, including 275, 350, 500, 875, 1000, 1250, 1500, etc., were not model numbers; hence, there is no such pen as a “Sheaffer 1250.” Rather, a pen whose imprint reads 1250 was intended to retail for $12.50.
sheath	See trumpet.
shell	(also hood) The conical cover that encloses and conceals a hooded nib, such as that on a Parker “51”.
shellac	A solution of purified lac (the resinous secretion of the lac insect) in denatured alcohol; used as a wood finish. Various joints in fountain pens, such as that between the sac and the section, are secured using shellac as an adhesive. See also palm shellac.
shoulder	(also web) The widest portion of a nib; the corner where the side edge of a nib turns inward to become the edge of the tine. See illustration at nib.
shutoff	(also ink shutoff, shut-off) A device that prevents ink from flowing to the nib when operated. The most common shutoff is a shaft extending the length of the barrel in an eyedropper pen (usually, Japanese). The shaft connects to a blind cap that screws in or out; its conical end engages a mating depression in the back end of the section, blocking the flow of ink when the blind cap is screwed down. This inconvenient design requires the user to open the shutoff after uncapping the pen and then, occasionally, wait for the flow of ink to reëstablish itself. See also Safety Ink Shut Off.
Signet	Parker’s name for any of its pen models when fitted with a gold-filled cap and barrel, first applied to an Aero-metric “51”.
silicone grease	A grease based on a silicone (siloxane) compound rather than petroleum; used on pens because it does not react with rubber parts such as sacs and feeds. See also silicone spray.
silicone spray	An aerosol lubricant based on a silicone (siloxane) compound rather than petroleum. Despite its silicone base, this product is inappropriate for use on pens because the propellant is usually heptane, a petroleum distillate. See also silicone grease.
silver	A soft white precious metal. Used (usually as sterling) to make pen bodies and furniture, and as an alloying component with other metals to adjust color or mechanical proerties. See also coin silver, green gold, rose gold, palladium silver, sterling.
singing	A squeaking or squealing sound that some nibs make as they write. Singing is a harmonic vibration that occurs when friction between the nib’s tip and the paper causes the nib to “stick” and release repeatedly at the resonant frequency of the nib. When a nib that sings is stroked very rapidly across the paper, as in signing with a flourish, the vibration can be sufficiently energetic to atomize the ink, creating an aerosol spray that peppers the paper with tiny droplets. When this happens, the stroke itself usually becomes very broad and fuzzy in appearance, as shown below.
Single Jewel	See SJ, definition 1.
SITB	Colloquial abbreviation for “Slime In The Bottle,” a phenomenon caused by chemical incompatibilities between components of an ink. SITB can appear as “strings” in a bottle of ink, or it can look like lumps of jellied inky sludge, either in a bottle or in a pen. Contrast with mold.
61	A pen model introduced by Parker in 1956; the first successful capillary-filling fountain pen. Shown here is a First Edition 61. In 1969 Parker replaced the capillary-filling 61 with a cartridge/converter version in response to persistent complaints from owners who were dissatisfied with the pen’s need for more care and maintenance than other fountain pens. Read a profile of the 61 here.
SJ	1  (Single Jewel) A pen with a jewel (with or without a tassie) on the cap crown but none at the end of the barrel. See also DJ, jewel, tassie.  2  A member of Esterbrook’s “J” family of pens. The SJ is shorter and thinner than the J. Shown below are a green SJ and a black J. Read a profile of the J family here.
Skrip®	Sheaffer’s registered trademark name for a proprietary fountain-pen ink introduced in 1922. In order to distinguish the product from its competition, Sheaffer’s advertising referred to it as writing fluid rather than as ink. See also RC-35.
Skripsert	Sheaffer’s name for several series of cartridge-filling pens introduced in about 1957. The term encompasses models ranging from $2.98 school pens to Lady Sheaffer pens retailing for more than $100.00. Shown here are a Skripsert Deluxe and a Lady Sheaffer XII Skripsert.
Skyline	A pen model introduced by Eversharp in 1941, designed by noted industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. The streamlined Skyline was an excellent writer and was the company’s most successful model ever. Read a profile of the Skyline here. See also moiré.
sleeve	(also thumb) A type of filling system. View a description and filling instructions here.
slip cap	A cap that slides (slips) onto the body of the pen to protect the nib and to prevent evaporation of the ink. Hard rubber slip caps were very unreliable, and most pen makers had abandoned them before 1920. See also cone cap, straight cap, taper cap.
slip-on clip	See accommodation clip.
slipper cap	An asymmetrical cap design created by Raymond Loewy for the Eversharp Symphony. As shown here, the cap appears almost to have been made from the halves of two caps welded together, with the clip attached to the shorter side. See also Symphony.
slit	The cut that divides the tines of a nib. The slit must be narrow enough for capillary action to draw ink to the tip while at the same time wide enough to deliver the quantity of ink that the nib demands when writing. Ordinary nibs have a single slit and two tines; some so-called “music” nibs have two slits and three tines. See illustration at nib. See also capillary action.
Snake	A pen, almost always black, with a decorative sculptured silver or gold overlay using snakes as its motif. The best known and most desirable Snakes are the Parker Nos 37 and 38 eyedropper fillers, c. 1900. Shown here is a no-name German piston-filling Snake.
snap ring	(also C-ring or circlip) A C-shaped ring made of spring wire; snaps into a groove machined inside the barrel of a lever-filling pen to provide a pivot for the lever and secure the lever in the barrel.
Snorkel	A series of pens made by Sheaffer beginning in 1952, noted for its unique filling mechanism (see below). View a description and filling instructions here. See a profile of the Snorkel series here and a cross-section of the anatomy of a Snorkel pen here.
soft	1  (as usually applied to nibs) Not firm or rigid, but not flexible in the sense of a true flexible nib. Most soft nibs are springy or bouncy (“live”). The Pelikan M1000 and most Omas Arte Italiana models have soft nibs. The Namiki Falcon’s nib is identified as being soft, but it is semiflexible without being particularly live.  2  (as usually applied to metal objects in general) Easy to bend without significant ability to return; easy to scratch or otherwise mar. The 22K gold nib used on the Platinum “22” is so bendable that even moderate writing pressure will spring it; and its surface pits badly under attempts to polish it with the most common tool for buffing nibs, red rouge on a muslin wheel.
soldier clip	See military clip.
Solv-X	A “secret ingredient” in Parker Quink; claimed to clean the pen while you use it. First advertised during World War II, possibly as a marketing ploy to encourage patriotic consumers to use Quink in order to avoid wasting critical materials by allowing their pens to become ruined by clogging. See also Quink.
Sonnet	A pen model introduced by Parker in 1993. The Sonnet (illustrated below in black lacquer and sterling silver Fougère) features a screw-interchangeable nib unit and is a workhorse pen that has appeared in a broad variety of colors and trim variations at many price levels with both steel and gold nibs.
Soyuz	(“Union” in Russian) A pen manufacturer located in Leningrad, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (now St. Petersburg, Russia). Produced a broad variety of pens, including accordion-filling copies of the Parker “51” and cartridge/converter pens similar to the Montblanc Generations. Shown here is a high-end “51” copy.
spade nib	Term for a triple-broad nib (BBB or 3B).
spear feed	The earliest practical feed design, with no special features to increase the capillary surface for flow buffering, as shown here. See also feed.
Special	1  The Parker Duofold Special (1920s), a pen of Senior length but having a narrower, Junior-sized girth.  2  The Parker “51” Special (from 1950), a less costly version of the “51” having an Octanium nib, a black cap jewel, and a non Aero-metric squeeze filler fitted with a plastic breather tube shortened so that the sac could never fill completely: the ink level would fall below the end of the breather tube when the pen was held nib upward. See also Octanium.
special edition	(colloquially, SE) A pen model whose production run is limited in some way, such as for a particular retailer. See also limited edition.
Speedline	Parker’s name for the second generation of its Vacumatic pen design. The Speedline filler (shown here) differs from the earlier Lockdown version in that the plunger lacks the notches at the outer ends of the slots in the Lockdown’s plunger and therefore does not lock in the depressed position. See also filler, Lockdown.
Spencerian	A round American handwriting system developed by Platt Rogers Spencer (1800–1864). Spencer based his system loosely on English Round Hand (copperplate) styles, but it is less formal and more “alive” than most copperplate work. Shown here is a short exemplar created by master penman Edward B. Weyman. Note the expansive use of flourishes, a common feature of period Spencerian handwriting. See also calligraphy, copperplate. (See an envelope inscribed by Mr. Weyman here.)
Split Arrow clip	A clip design used by Parker from about 1938 to 1948, so called because it looks like an arrow that is split lengthwise, with the name PARKER running vertically down the split. Read an article that includes a discussion on variations of the Split Arrow clip, with illustrations, here. See also Arrow clip and the illustration at clip.
split band	A cap decoration consisting of two (or more) narrow bands in lieu of a single broader one.
Spoon feed	An early feed design used by Waterman into the 1940s, with vaguely spoon-shaped cutouts along its upper surface, as shown here, to provide increased capillary surface for better flow buffering. (Photo has been retouched to show features more clearly.) See also feed.
spoon nib	(also spoon-tip nib) A cheap nib design used for third-tier pens, primarily in the first half ot the 20th century. A spoon nib is made of steel without iridium tipping; the tip is stamped into the shape of a spoon’s bowl to provide a rounded writing pad. The illustration below shows a NOS Velvet Point No. 6 spoon nib installed in a no-name pen. See also butterfly nib, rolled-under nib.
sprung	1  A term describing a nib (often a flexible one) that has been permanently bent upward away from the feed by excessive writing pressure. In severe cases, there is a distinct crease across one or both tines where the stress was greatest. The sprung Waterman’s Lady Patricia nib illustrated below (left) shows a crease about 2/5 of the way from the breather hole to the tip. The Omas 360 nib shown to the right below is also sprung; note the gentle upward sweep of the nib away from the feed and the visible gap between the nib and the feed. The damage to the Omas nib, although it may look slight, is more than sufficient to stop the nib from working because the tines have been lifted from the feed and spread far enough apart that the nib cannot maintain capillary action. See also capillary action, flexible.  2  Term describing a clip that has been bent away from the cap.
squeeze bar	(also squeeze-bar, squeezebar) A type of filling system. View a description and filling instructions here.
SST	Stainless Steel Trim. See also stainless steel.
Stacked Coin band	A cap band with several parallel grooves around its circumference, having the appearance of a stack of coins. The band illustrated here is on a Wearever mechanical pencil. See also Jeweler’s band.
stainless steel	A class of strongly rust-resistant steels, often slightly brownish gray in color, containing varying amounts of chromium (no less than 11.5% by weight) and nickel. 18-8 stainless, for example, contains 18% chromium and 8% nickel. Used for making furniture on some pens (notably Esterbrook) and for making nibs. Contrary to popular conception, stainless steels are not absolutely rustproof. Better grades of stainless (austenitic steels) are nonmagnetic. See also corrosion, pitting,steel.
Standard	See International.
stanhope	(also Stanhope) A tiny picture viewer built into a personal object such as a sewing needle case or a pen cap; comprises a magnifying lens and a microscopic photograph, sometimes risqué in nature. When built into a pen, usually arranged so that the picture can be viewed by peering through a small hole in the side of the cap. The stanhope viewer was developed by René Prudent Patrice Dagron (1819-1900) and is named for Charles, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1753-1816), who invented the plano-convex lens used in the device.
Star clip	A variation of Parker’s Split Arrow clip, used on Vacumatic pens for a short period from late 1938 to early 1939. See a cap with a Star clip here.
star nib	Early L. E. Waterman nibs, primarily from the late 19th century, bearing a star in the imprint; uncommon and desirable.
steel	1  Generally, any alloy of iron that has been strengthened by the inclusion of small mounts of carbon.  2  Commonly, in reference to fountain pens, the stainless steel of which inexpensive nibs are made. See also Durium, Octanium, stainless steel, steel pen.
steel pen	(archaic) A dip pen nib made of carbon steel. Steel pens are not tipped with iridium or any other durable alloy, and they wear relatively rapidly. Illustrated to the right is an R. Esterbrook Radio steel pen, Nº 954. This pen is nickel plated for corrosion resistance; but many steel pens are simply coated wtih light oil, and users of these types of pens frequently suck on a new pen for a few moments to allow saliva to dissolve the oil so that ink will adhere to the pen. See also dip pen, gold pen, nib (historical note).
stem winder	Term used by the Charles H. Ingersoll Dollar Pen Company to denote the filling knob (illustrated to the right) located at the back end of the barrel on an Ingersoll twist-filling pen (see below); borrowed from the stem winder on a pocket watch such as those produced by the Robert H. Ingersoll & Bros. Watch Company. Later used by Sears, Roebuck & Co. for their twist fillers that “wind like a watch.”
sterling	A designation indicating an alloy in which 92.5% of the total metal content, by weight, is silver; the other 7.5% is usually copper. The same as 925. On pens, used for caps, barrels, furniture, and (on vintage pens) overlays. See also coin silver, silver.
sticker	An adhesive paper or plastic label affixed to a pen to indicate nib size, model name or number, price, and so on. Shown below are paper stickers on a Parker VS and a plastic sticker on a Waterman Skyboy. See also chalk mark.
Stonite	A marketing name for the celluloid used in Gold Bond pens (produced by the National Pen Products Company). See also celluloid.
straight cap	A short slip cap that mates with a straight cylindrical area of reduced diameter on the pen body (the straight holder), as shown by the Onoto pen below. See also cone cap, slip cap, taper cap.
straight holder	See straight cap.
streamlined	Shaped in such a manner as to offer the least possible resistance to a current of air, water, etc.; in general, teardrop or torpedo shaped. Beginning with the 1929 introduction of Sheaffer’s Balance, streamlined pens rapidly supplanted the blocky flat-ended models that had hitherto been in general use. See also Balance.
striated	Another term for striped. Frequently applied to the Parker Vacumatic (horizontally or laterally striated, shown near right) and Sheaffer’s pens of the later 1930s and early 1940s (vertically or longitudinally striated, far right).
stub	(More correctly, stub italic.) The nib shape that is characterized by a moderately wide thin tip ground straight across, for creating broader strokes in a generally up-and-down direction than in a generally sidewise direction. A stub nib is narrower and produces less line variation than an ordinary italic or oblique italic. Stubs are also ground to be relatively smooth in use. Read a tutorial on nibs here. See also italic, music nib, nib, and oblique.
stud	See button.
student pen	See school pen.
stylographic pen	(also ink pencil; appears as stylografic pen in some 19th-century documents) A pen with a tubular tip and an ink reservoir. The flow of ink is controlled by a wire that can move within the tip. Modern stylographic pens are called technical pens and are used mostly by artists, draftsmen, and illustrators. Shown here is a Keuffel & Esser “Leroy” technical pen from the early 1970s. See also dip pen, fountain pen, Inkograph.
Stylpoint	A nib design introduced by Sheaffer in about 1960; a small nib that fits into an opening at the front of the pen body so that the nib is partially hooded. Used on cartridge-filling student models and Stylpoint pens as a lower-cost alternative to the Skripsert line’s Triumph nib and also on the Imperial I, an “economy” model with a Touchdown-like filling system. Shown here is the nib section of an Imperial I.
styrene	See ABS, polystyrene.
sub-brand	A companion brand associated with a first-tier manufacturer; typically used on pens sold at a price point lower than the primary-brand products. Used most frequently to allow a manufacturer to penetrate the entry-level market without diminishing the stature of its primary brand; in some cases used as platforms to test unproven features or technologies without risking the primary brand’s reputation for reliability. Some manufacturers explicitly linked their sub-brands to their primary brands, as in the case of Oxford pens, which were imprinted MADE IN U.S.A. BY THE MAKERS OF EVERSHARP. In other cases, the kinship of the brands is revealed by commonalities of design or styling. In addition to Oxford, well-known sub-brands included WASP, Vacuum-Fil, Univer and Craig (Sheaffer); All-American (Conklin); and Remex and Penanink (L. E. Waterman).
Sumgai	1  (as originally conceived by Bill Riepl, who invented him) The dread nemesis of all collectors, Sumgai always visits the antique shop just before you and gets all the good pens. Read “The Story of Sumgai” here.  2  (as commonly used among hobbyists) A pen acquired at a ridiculously low price.
Superchrome®	Parker’s registered trademark name for a proprietary fountain-pen ink introduced in 1948 to replace the company’s superfast-drying but highly corrosive “51” ink. Superchrome’s principal selling features were its brilliant colors (produced by the use of metallic dyes) and its quick drying; but it too contained isopropyl alcohol and was rather corrosive (pH approximately 12), and Parker withdrew it in 1956. See also “51”.
surfactant	(also wetting agent) A substance that reduces the surface tension of a liquid in which it is dissolved. Used in ink to enhance flow characteristics; without a surfactant, the surface tension of water is sufficiently great to prevent flow through the channels of a pen’s feed or the slit in the nib. Many surfactants are detergent in action; thus, Parker’s World War II-era claim, that Quink with “Solv-X” cleaned the user’s pen, was not mere advertising hoopla. See also ink.
Sword clip	An ornamental clip design (shown to the right) used on the Parker Royal Challenger. Some Royal Challengers had Sword clips, while a larger number had plainer clips; the Sword-clip pens, far less common, are highly sought after and bring premium prices. See also Challenger.
Symetrik	See Endura.
Symphony	A pen model introduced by Eversharp in 1948, designed by noted industrial designer Raymond Loewy. The very modern Symphony was internally identical to its predessor, the Skyline, but the company quickly backed away from Loewy’s edgy design. Read a profile of the Symphony here.
syringe	A type of filling system. View a description and filling instructions here. See also post (definition 2).

The information in this glossary is as accurate as possible, but you should not take it as absolutely authoritative.

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