Pen

A thin freehand stroke with a hard edge, the way a fine-liner marks a print.

The Pen draws a thin freehand stroke with a hard edge and rounded ends. It is the default ink tool, and the one for a mark that has to sit on the linework without covering it.

Draw it: press, drag, release. The cursor is a circle matching the stroke width.

Settings

• Size: 1 to 20, default 1. Stroke width in page points.
• Colour: the stroke. Default red.
• Opacity: none. The Pen is the one ink tool meant to be fully solid, which is what makes it legible at width 1.

Notes

• One stroke is one markup. Lifting the pointer and drawing again gives two markups that select and delete separately.
• Ends are rounded rather than cut square, so a short tick reads as a dot rather than a dash.
• The path is smoothed when the stroke is committed, and the Pen is smoothed the least of the four ink tools: at width 1, a pass strong enough to help a highlighter would visibly move the line off whatever it was drawn against.

See also

For a mark that lets linework through, use the Marker or the Highlighter, both of which have opacity. For the same stroke with a soft edge, use the Brush.