So, Why Should You Use a Stylus?

A.K.A.: Why using a stylus is like eating pizza with a knife and fork…and why we’re ok with that.

Seriously, is there really a point to using a stylus? Isn’t using a stylus just a way of looking a little more fancy when operating your smartphone—kind of like eating a candy bar with a fork, à la George Costanza? Honestly, the days of the Blackberry with the teeny, tiny keyboard are long gone and even fingers that are slightly wider than the norm can effectively use a touchscreen. So doesn’t that make the stylus a precious, pretentious, and vestigial accessory to modern mobile computing?

Turns out…no. Much like eating pizza with utensils (which, let us be clear, we do not endorse in all scenarios), the benefits of using a stylus with your smartphone or tablet are many.

First, let’s consider greasy fingers. Nobody likes those, because they often spread grease to other surfaces, like your designer jeans or business attire, which could easily be ruined with a smudge of pizza debris. Or your fancy new tablet, which may become increasingly less responsive to your input as the touchscreen becomes coated with smears.

Next, a word on germs. To expand on the concept of greasy fingers, let’s just make it clear that human hands are always dirty—and frequently downright filthy. Just as many people wisely prefer not to touch their food or their mouths with germ-laden hands, so do many people prefer not to touch public screens that have been graced with the germs of countless previous users. Consider how many germs you may avoid if you use your own stylus to operate the ATM, the credit card machine at the grocery store, or (gasp) the electronic check-in at the doctor’s office.

See? You’re already looking towards the stylus much more favorably, aren’t you? And we’re not even talking about inductive styluses, the ones that actually interact with touchscreens. We’re referring to the plain old, run-of-the-mill capacitive stylus can help keep your screen and immune system markedly less gross—and do so much more.

A stylus can be used to increase the accuracy of your typing and swiping on any smartphone or touchscreen device. It can also help you more precisely highlight and select specific text (you know you’ve struggled to highlight a phone number buried in text before), or make selections in forms or drop-down menus.

With a stylus, you can take advantage of creative apps that let you draw or write on your screen.

Isn’t a hallmark of human evolution our use of tools? If so, doesn’t that make pizza-with-a-fork eaters advanced diners, and stylus users the most highly-evolved of tech users?

We submit that, yes, people who use a stylus with their smartphone/tablet are more highly-evolved. We further submit that people who use the dual-tool of a pen/stylus combo have so eclipsed the basic use of office implements that they are well on their way to global communication domination.

So…the next time there’s an office pizza lunch, you sit right down at that table with your fork, knife, and your favorite stylus pen—and you show them you’re here to win.

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