The first time I ever really noticed a pencil was in the fourth grade, when a classmate stabbed me with one that had been freshly sharpened to prison-shiv standards. The “lead” tip snapped off under my skin, leaving a weird purple bump in my leg for weeks until it finally worked its way out. I am still a little mad at Daniel (seriously, what did I do to deserve a pencil stabbing?), but it did get me thinking about pencils in a way I never had before. Would I get lead poisoning? Why are pencils yellow? Is there a reason they all smell like my grandma’s cedar chest in a way I can still taste? And would Daniel ever be brought to justice for his unprovoked war crime?
Everyone has a pencil memory from their school days. Maybe you sniffed the “chocolatey” goodness of a scented pencil from the school vending machine (and also possibly nibbled it). Or maybe you sharpened your D.A.R.E. “don’t do drugs” pencil down until it just said “do drugs” and laughed about it for hours. At the very least, you probably remember filling in a million bubbles on standardized tests that weirdly insisted on the exact No. 2 yellow pencil, as if the Scantron machine was the electronic equivalent of the Princess and the Pea.
“Pencils have so many different designs and purposes and come in an almost limitless array of colors now, but many of us still gravitate toward the yellow No. 2 school pencil,” says Scott Johnson, president of Musgrave Pencil Company, one of only three U.S. pencil manufacturers that produces more than 90 million pencils each year.
Decades later, I’m still curious about pencils, so I gave Johnson a call. And boy did he deliver with answers to all my questions (except what happened to Daniel). Read on to find out why pencils are yellow, plus a bunch of surprisingly cool facts about how they’re made and what your pencil has to do with Dolly Parton.
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When were pencils invented?
Pencils as we know them today are a relatively modern invention—if you call the late 1700s modern. Before then, people were making marks on things for millennia, of course, using everything from paint to blood to burnt twigs. Then, in the 16th century, the English discovered a massive deposit of graphite, a naturally occurring form of the element carbon, and realized it was great for marking sheep and making cannonballs (two very important yet polar opposite necessities that I think kind of encapsulate life in the 16th century). Eventually, people began to use the graphite sticks to make all kinds of markings, wrapped in string or jammed into awkward holders, because graphite on its own is very smudgy and crumbly. This worked fine … unless you wanted precision and portability.
The real pencil breakthrough came in 1795, when French inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté mixed powdered graphite with clay, shaped it into a cylinder and encased it in wood—and the modern pencil was born. Finally, you could write without inky messes, bulky tools or accidentally smearing your signature across the page like a toddler’s finger painting.
So why are pencils yellow?
The yellow pencil wasn’t just an aesthetic choice—it was marketing genius. In the late 1800s, the best graphite came from China, and pencil makers wanted everyone to know they were using the good stuff. In Chinese culture, yellow represented royalty, glory, wisdom and respect, so when Czech manufacturing company Hardtmuth Pencil introduced their “luxury pencil” in 1889, they chose the sunny hue to show they were using the highest-quality materials.
Johnson explains that these yellow pencils were named “Koh-I-Noor,” after the legendary diamond from the British crown jewels, to show that the graphite was “diamond quality.” From there, everyone wanted the same vibe. “At the time, the color yellow represented luxury, elegance and quality, and it became ‘the’ color for pencils,” he says. “So eventually, other companies followed suit, and the yellow stuck.”
Is there a standard yellow for pencils?
Believe it or not, no. “Most companies have developed a proprietary yellow color that is unique to their brand,” Johnson says. “And there can be more than one shade of yellow. For instance, we have two shades of yellow that we use for our pencils.”
Despite the early marketing claims, the color of the pencil actually doesn’t have anything to do with performance. “All colors work equally well—it’s really just a branding choice,” Johnson says, though he adds that some colors are used to show the purpose of the pencil (more on that below).
Yellow is also very eye-catching (also the reason school buses are yellow). That bright paint shouts: I‘m not just a stick of wood—I’m the main character. “We call pencils the world’s smallest billboards,” Johnson says. “If you’re holding one, you will look at it and probably read what it says—you can’t help it.”
But even now, with pencils available in every color imaginable (including custom shades), yellow remains the go-to choice for schools, tests and nostalgic note-takers.
How are pencils made?
“It takes over 100 processes to make a single pencil,” Johnson says. “Kind of surprising when you think how ‘simple’ a pencil appears to be.”
If you’ve ever imagined a pencil factory, you might picture something like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river, only with a graphite slurry instead of cocoa. The truth is slightly less magical but still fascinating. First, the “lead”—actually graphite mixed with clay—is ground and blended into a paste, then squeezed into long, thin rods and baked in a kiln until they’re hard enough to write but soft enough to sharpen. Meanwhile, wooden “slats” (often made from incense cedar, which gives pencils that unmistakable nostalgic smell) are milled and grooved like a tiny boardwalk.
Next comes the pencil sandwich: a layer of wood, the graphite cores laid neatly in the grooves, and another layer of wood glued on top. This “pencil sandwich” is pressed and dried, then fed through cutting machines that shape them into hexagons (to stop them from rolling away) or rounds (to make your fingers cramp more stylishly).
Once shaped, the pencils are painted. (Musgrave does six to nine coats for that glossy finish, Johnson says.) Then the little metal bit, called a ferrule, is crimped onto one end before a pink eraser is jammed in. The final step? Stamping on the brand name and grade and any other message you want.
So by the time a yellow No. 2 gets to you, it’s already been handled by dozens of machines and people, and it’s ready for bubble tests, doodled cats or, sigh, nonconsensual leg stabbings.
Do pencils actually contain lead?
No, and they never have. My fear of dying slowly by lead poisoning was unfounded. (Graphite isn’t toxic.)
“People think that ‘pencil lead’ used to be lead, but it actually never was,” Johnson says. “Pencils were made with graphite, which people at the time confused as a form of lead but isn’t.”
The confusion goes back to the 1500s, when a giant deposit of pure graphite was discovered in England. People thought it was lead because it looked and felt similar, and the nickname stuck. So no, chewing your pencil won’t give you lead poisoning—though your dentist might stage an intervention.
Why do schools always insist on No. 2 pencils?
Because standardized-test machines are picky. They’re calibrated to read the marks from a very specific graphite hardness, and the No. 2 was deemed the Goldilocks of pencils. “It was dark enough that the machines could read it but also hard enough that it wouldn’t smudge and could be easily erased,” Johnson says. So when the school year starts in the fall, parents everywhere stock up.
But there are way more pencils than just the No. 2. The numbering system is based on how hard the graphite is due to how much clay is mixed in—more clay means harder lead. Hard lead is lighter, cleaner and easier to erase, while soft lead is darker, easily smeared and harder to erase, Johnson says. The pencil scale runs from 1 (soft, dark) to 9 (hard, light), with fancy letter grades like B (black) and H (hard) in the mix. So the school standard is the HB No. 2—a hard black pencil.
What are different types of pencils used for?
“Part of the fun of being ‘the pencil guy’ is getting to see just how many cool uses for pencils there are and how we can make pencils to suit those,” Johnson says. Here are the most popular types of pencils:
- No. 1 (B grade): Softer and darker than a No. 2, great for bold writing or shading, but it smudges and spreads like bad gossip.
- No. 2 (e): As noted above, this is the Goldilocks pencil—dark enough for Scantron machines, light enough to erase without leaving a crime scene.
- No. 3 (H grade): Harder lead, lighter lines. Perfect for neat note-taking … if you don’t mind breaking the teacher’s “No. 2 only” rule.
- No. 4 (2H grade): Very hard, very light. Mostly for drafting (like an architect would do), not doodling cats in your notebook.
- Artist grades (B through 9B): Extra-soft, extra-dark graphite for rich shading. The higher the B number, the softer and smudgier it gets.
- Mechanical pencils: Not technically “wooden pencils,” but beloved by neat freaks who never want to deal with sharpening.
Specialty pencils
- Test-scoring pencils: They contain electrostatic graphite, so Scantron machines pick them up with 100% accuracy. Nerd gold.
- Carpenter pencils: These pencils have flat, chunky bodies so they won’t roll off the roof while you’re measuring shingles. They also make you look very “hands-on” at the hardware store.
- Colored pencils: From art-class staples to fancy watercolor varieties, colored pencils let you shade, sketch or fill in adult coloring books without judgment.
- Bridge pencils: Longer, thinner pencils designed for marking cards in games like bridge, they’re also a great conversation starter with anyone over 80.
- Jumbo pencils: Big and chunky, they’re perfect for small kids who are learning to write … or adults who keep losing regular pencils in couch cushions.
- Novelty pencils: Glitter-coated, scented, shaped like lightsabers, topped with pumpkins—you name it, someone has made it into a pencil.
Johnson’s personal favorite to write with? “As a musician, my favorite pencil is the ‘songwriter pencil’—a 4B that allows me to quickly mark my sheet music.” And here’s a fun bit of trivia: It’s labeled as the “119” in reference to Jan. 19, Dolly Parton’s birthday, so yes, this pencil is named after her!
Why are the erasers of a yellow pencil always pink?
Early pencils didn’t even have erasers. Mistakes were erased with bits of bread (which, to be fair, is still a better use for white sandwich bread than eating it). In 1858, Hymen Lipman patented the eraser-topped pencil, but the standard pink hue didn’t come along until the early 1900s. That color is thanks to pumice, a volcanic material often used in erasers. When mixed with rubber, it turned a rosy shade that was bright, cheerful and easy to spot when you accidentally flicked it across the classroom.
The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company pioneered the pink hue, which came from the specific type of Italian pumice they used. Other companies used pumice, but it wasn’t the same kind, so it didn’t give the same pink color. People loved the pink, though, and it even got its own name: Pink Pearl erasers. And the rest, as they say, is history!
Do school kids around the world use yellow pencils with pink erasers?
Nope, it’s different in classrooms around the world! In Germany, pencils are often green; in Japan, they’re deep maroon; and in the U.K., they’re frequently unpainted wood. The U.S. just really leaned into the yellow-and-pink combo and never let go.
“Currently, one of our most popular sellers is the ‘cerise’ or pastel line,” Johnson says. “People really enjoy a wide variety of colors in pencils.”
Even with today’s rainbow of pencil designs—neon, glitter, holographic—the classic yellow No. 2 still reigns supreme here. Because when something works for filling in bubbles, doodling in margins and possibly staging a small-scale elementary school shanking, you stick with it.
About the expert
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At Reader’s Digest, we’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on why pencils are yellow, Charlotte Hilton Anderson tapped her experience as a longtime journalist who often covers common curiosities and facts for Reader’s Digest. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Scott Johnson, president of the Musgrave Pencil Company; Zoom interview, Aug. 11, 2025
- Musgrave Pencil Company: “How a Pencil is Made”
- Artsy: “The Little-Known Reason Pencils Are Yellow”
The post Here’s the Real Reason Why Pencils Are Yellow appeared first on Reader's Digest.
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