Wikipedia
Blue pencil may refer to:
- Blue pencil (editing), a pencil traditionally used by an editor or sub-editor to show corrections to written copy
- Blue pencil doctrine, a legal concept in common law countries
A blue pencil is a pencil traditionally used by an editor or sub-editor to show corrections to a written copy.
The colour is used specifically because it will not show in some lithographic or photographic reproduction processes; these are known as non-photo blue pencils. For similar reasons, sometimes red pencils are used since their pigment will not reproduce by xerography.
With the introduction of electronic editing using word processors or desktop publishing, literal blue pencils are seen more rarely, but still exist in metaphor.
The " blue pencil test" is used by courts of law as a method for deciding whether contractual obligations can be partially enforced.
Blue pencil is also used pejoratively to mean censorship.
Usage examples of "blue pencil".
Pissing stallions stand for eternities with arched back on two legs in pants, forming a roof over their excrescences with right hands, mostly married, prop their hips with their left hands, look ahead with mournful eyes, and decipher inscriptions, dedications, confessions, prayers, outcries, rhymes, and names, scribbled in blue pencil scratched with nail scissors, leather punch, or nail.
The Banner editorials were written by Gail Wynand as he stood at a table in the composing room, written as always on a huge piece of print stock, with a blue pencil, in letters an inch high.
None of those things interested me: all that interested me was the empty spaces in the diary pages and the little blue pencil.
A pile of paper, a few pounds in change and notes, about fifty or so dollars in his billfold, his key ring, his driver's licence, the bloody handkerchieffrom somewhere they'd retrieved the map of London he'd covered Walter with: one of his thumbprints stood out clearly, a blood stained spiral in New Cross, now ringed in blue pencil.
If it had not been for Paddy, I fear we should have seen very little, for Shelton was not only secretive, but his explanations were such that even the editor of a technical journal would have had to blue pencil them considerably.
Already he had scaled the paper, striking diagonal lines with the blue pencil that wouldn't photograph.
There is a blue pencil behind his ear, and a sheaf of what we call in the profession “.
He found what he wanted, a carpenter's blue pencil, and was back alongside our gangster before he had collected himself sufficiently to scramble to his feet.
She used to paste these into books, or send them to her friends, having first drawn a broad bar in blue pencil down the margin, a proceeding which signified equally and indistinguishably the depths of her reprobation or the heights of her approval.
She was using a blue pencil to cross things out angrily on a sheet of not very neat typing.
Dellimare was typed on it and below, in blue pencil, was scrawled the one word Collect.
Taking the blue pencil from his pocket, Tom beamed a ray of infrared light into the inky darkness.