Can I use a HB mechanical pencil on an OMR Bubble Scantron test?
No 2 Mechanical Pencil = 0.5 HB I get a fair few hits from people searching with terms like those above. Then there are the emails from the parents of weeping children – “My daughter had one of those fill in the bubble tests at school today and she used a mechanical pencil, but they were supposed to use a #2 pencil, and now she’s terrified the machine isn’t going to read her paper properly and she’s going to fail. She’s been crying ever since she got home from school.” Well hopefully this posting will let you dry those tears and sleep easy. I think this is all covered in various other posts on this blog, but I’m going to try and be a helpful guy and put it all in one place, all nice and succinct. I personally believe all this to be true, from having used a pencil or two over the years and from the accumulated wisdom of commenter’s on this and other blogs, but nothings certain apart from death and taxes. So, the questions.
