how come erasable pens never got popular, and why are there 2 names for the color purple?

Answer 1

There are LOTS of names for "purple". Violet, purple, plum, magenta, wine, lavendar... And erasable pens are just silly. If you want to erase, use a pencil. Pens are for permanency. I think people were afraid that someone could change the amount on a check, for instance, or remove their signature from a legal document, even though the ink turned permanent after a certain period of time. There just wasn't a big interest in having a pen that you could erase.

Answer 2

Matt,
In my experience, erasable pens never erased completely and tore up the paper. Using pencils for something that might need to be erased was always easier and more effective.

As for the color purple and it's names... There are as many names for purple as there are shades of it. "Purple" usually refers to the basic shade that you get when you divide or refract light into its component colors (usually using a prism).

You've probably heard of "Roy G. Biv" the name we use to name the colors in the order they're refracted: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

When I see the word "purple" I assume it's a basic shade reasonably close to the "violet" of the color spectrum.

Why both "purple" AND "violet"? That's actually a quirk of how language develops. Scientists used "violet" and artists used "purple" and we regular folks learned both names.

Hope this helped!

Answer 3

Matt ... I didn't especially like the styling of the erasable pens. And you've seen the comments from other people who've answered too.

However, banks were having fits (were upset) about people playing games with their checks. I have to wonder whether people hesitated to use erasable ink because someone receiving their check might try to alter it. If the check were written with erasable ink, this might pose a problem for people.

Answer 4

erasable pens never grew to be a popular utensil because they never fully erased the pen off the paper.

purple.... and what violet?

Answer 5

Can't answer the color question, but I remember erasable pens as being messy.

Answer 6

erasable pens dont erase ink very well and it's easier to cut out the word. as for the colours, are all men colour blind? there are different shades of each colour and they have different names- purple, violet, indigo, magenta, fuchsia- very different, but mixtures of the same basic colours: blue and red. it's like banana yellow and sunset yellow- different shades

Answer 7

Well, the whole point of a pen is to be permanant.