Pen Emoji

A blue or black ballpoint pen, cap off, ready to write. Emojipedia describes it as a pen "as used for everyday writing," and that's exactly the vibe: this is the casual, workhorse writing tool. Not the fountain pen (🖋️) for formal signatures. Not the quill nib (✒️) for literary pretensions. Just a regular pen.

In texting, 🖊️ shows up when people are talking about writing, signing, note-taking, or creative work. Writer and author bios on Instagram often include it alongside 📖 and ☕. It's also the emoji of choice for contract and deal announcements ("signed 🖊️"), even though courts have ruled that emojis themselves can count as digital signatures.

The original Unicode name was "Lower Left Ballpoint Pen," which is one of those hilariously specific names Unicode gives things. They simplified it to just "Pen" later.

🖊️ lives mostly in three contexts.

First, the writer/author community. On Instagram, bios like "🖊️ Writer | 📖 Storyteller | ☕ Fueled by caffeine" are everywhere. On TikTok's #WriterTok and #BookTok, 🖊️ appears in captions about drafting, journaling, and creative process content.

Second, business and deal announcements. "Just signed with [agency/label/team] 🖊️" is a standard format on Twitter/X and LinkedIn. Sports signings, record deals, and publishing contracts all get the 🖊️ treatment.

Third, education and study content. Students use it in study session posts, note-taking discussions, and back-to-school content. It pairs naturally with 📝, 📚, and 🎓.

It's not a high-frequency emoji. The ✍️ Writing Hand gets about 4-5x more search volume because it works both as a writing reference and in the popular ✍️between✍️words✍️format for emphasis.

The ballpoint pen itself has a dramatic origin story. László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist, noticed that newspaper ink dried faster than fountain pen ink. Working with his brother György, a chemist, he developed a ball-tipped pen that could use thicker, quick-drying ink. He presented it at the Budapest International Fair in 1931 and patented it in Paris in 1938.

Then history intervened. On December 31, 1938, the last day before a new law banned taking patents abroad, Bíró fled Hungary with his family. He eventually settled in Argentina in 1943 at the personal invitation of President Agustín Justo, who had spotted Bíró's unusual pen during a vacation in Yugoslavia. In Argentina, the brothers formed Biro Pens and the ballpoint pen became known as the "birome" (a blend of Bíró and his business partner Meyne). In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Italy, ballpoint pens are still called "biros" today.

The emoji arrived in Unicode 7.0 (June 2014) as U+1F58AU+1F58A LOWER LEFT BALLPOINT PEN, part of a batch of writing implements that also included 🖋️ (Fountain Pen) and ✍️ (Writing Hand). It was added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

• •László Bíró fled Hungary on December 31, 1938, the last day before a law banned taking patents abroad. He settled in Argentina at the personal invitation of its president and gave the world the modern ballpoint pen.
• •The ballpoint pen is called a "biro" in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Italy, a "birome" in Argentina, a "Kugelschreiber" (ball writer) in Germany, and a "stylo-bille" in France. All because of one Hungarian refugee.
• •"The pen is mightier than the sword" was coined in 1839 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, but the Assyrian sage Ahiqar expressed the same idea around 500 BCE: "The word is mightier than the sword."
• •A Canadian judge ruled that a thumbs-up emoji constituted a legally binding digital signature on a contract. Under the E-Sign Act, any "electronic symbol or process" can be a signature if sent with intent.
• •The 🖊️ emoji's original Unicode name was "Lower Left Ballpoint Pen." They later simplified it to just "Pen." Nobody misses the old name.

• •"The pen is mightier than the sword" was written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu. The full line: "Beneath the rule of men entirely great / The pen is mightier than the sword." The sentiment dates back to the Assyrian sage Ahiqar (~500 BCE).
• •A Canadian court ruled in 2023 that a thumbs-up emoji constituted a legally binding signature on a grain contract. The E-Sign Act defines electronic signatures broadly enough to include emoji, meaning your 🖊️ in a deal confirmation might carry legal weight.
• •László Bíró fled Nazi-occupied Hungary on December 31, 1938, the last day before a law banned taking patents abroad. He ended up in Argentina at the personal invitation of its president, and the ballpoint pen is still called "birome" there. In the UK, it's still called a "biro."
• •The Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, Anne) used the gender-neutral pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell because they believed their writing wouldn't be taken seriously under female names. George Orwell, Mark Twain, and J.K. Rowling (who also published as Robert Galbraith) all used pen names for different reasons.

• •🖊️ is U+1F58AU+1F58A (PEN) + U+FE0FU+FE0F (variation selector). Original name: LOWER LEFT BALLPOINT PEN.
• •Discord: :pen::pen:. Slack: :pen::pen:. GitHub: :pen::pen:.
• •There are four pen-adjacent emojis: 🖊️ (ballpoint), 🖋️ (fountain, U+1F58BU+1F58B), ✒️ (nib, U+2712U+2712), ✍️ (writing hand, U+270DU+270D). Plus ✏️ (pencil, U+270FU+270F) and 📝 (memo, U+1F4DDU+1F4DD).

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.