Buy an Expensive Pen

Making yourself a better writer may be as simple as upgrading your writing device. Expensive pens add a special quality to penmanship. Readers know the difference between 99 cent retractables purchased at a gas station and designer scribing devices contrived from titanium billets and moon rocks.

Inexpensive pen are are sometimes acceptable. It's OK to tuck an emergency cheapie pen into the glove compartment of your Bentley, but no one ever signed a peace treaty or a hostile takeover agreement with anything less than the finest available writing instrument.

Don't think about starting your next Great Novel or grocery list until you've shopped our list of expensive pens. We studied the market so you don't have to. What follows represents the best of pens from online sources. Grab your credit card (make sure it's signed on the back) and start improving your writing. It can't hurt.

Adding the phrase 'Limited Edition' to any product immediately makes it more desirable. In the case of a diamond-encrusted pen, we may be looking at the definition of redundancy. The body is platinum. The nib is rhodiated: we can't even find a definition for that, so it must be really exclusive.

This pen is guaranteed to be a very expensive pen, which is pretty much all you can ask for in a very expensive pen. It can be used to sign the credit card receipt at Applebee’s or to dig out loose change from between the seats of your Prius.

It's constructed with 18K Yellow gold and diamonds. It writes at any angle as long as the nib points downward. You can own it for less than the cost of two semesters at Harvard.

Somewhere in Italy, the Visconti corporation churns out limited edition fountain pens like nobody's business. This is one product that will attract the attention of everyone in Starbucks when you whip it out to solve the crossword puzzle while waiting for your chi tea to steep. Making friends and influencing people was never so easy.

Built from 18 carat yellow gold and then swathed in rhodium and ruthenium, this pen contains materials that would be at home on any ridiculously expensive pen. It draws an extremely straight line as long as your hand is rock steady or you own an absurdly expensive ruler. No one will read what you're writing anyway: the dazzle from the pen will psychologically scar anyone standing nearby with a generic Sharpie.

Don't look for it in a blister-pack at Office Depot. You'll have to send your personal assistant to the Tibaldi outlet store.

We still don't know rhodium and ruthenium might be. Order one soon, before they come to their senses and replace the rhodium and ruthenium with boring platinum.

The ink is an extremely pretty color.

Normal folks stick their diamonds in wedding rings, but knowledgeable social climbers and rap stars always keep a few spare stones for their pens. Priced the same as a decent used BMW, this pen won't get you from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds but it will fit into your pocket protector.

Your status will soar to heights undreamed when you give these away as party favors at your inaugural ball. Join the ranks of the moneyed few, at least until the ink runs out.

Fiskars gel pens perform as well as any diamond-encrusted status pen. Deploy a rainbow of colors for less than the cost of insuring an expensive pen. Your status may suffer, but every kindergarten kid will adore you. You may lose your seat at the boardroom table, but you can doodle on the lunchroom table.

Lacking opposable thumbs, the average dog has little use for an expensive pen, except for something to fetch when the Master of the House arrives home from a hard day of hostilely taking over pencil companies.

This particular pen may not provide hours of writing pleasure, but it does offer Lassie an indoor enclosure in which to cavort.