What the F is that?

I was thinking about pencil grades the other day, as a pencil geek is wont to do on occasion, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know where, in the pencil grading spectrum, the F grade went. What the F?

So I did a little digging, including Wikipedia where there was a chart placing the F grade between H and HB.  The article also noted that “H” means “hardness”, “B” means blackness and “F” is for “fine.”

So, then what about the whole #2 pencil for Scantronic tests? This was believed to be created by Conté (a name well-known to artists) and adopted by US pencil manufacturer John Thoreau (father of Henry David Thoreau) in the 19th century. This system utilizes just the five core hardnesses and breaks down like this:

The F grade is supposed to be that sweet spot between hard and soft pencils, just a little harder than those pesky #2 pencils we all relied upon to get us through primary school.

Also, HB and #2 are the same thing. If you are considering venturing into European or Asian pencil brands but want to purchase an all-around good hardness, HB or F may be a good place to start.

Now you know.