The archetypal pencil may have been the stylus, which was a thin mail stick, often unnatural from first place and worn for scratching on papyrus, a mode of early paper. The communiqu%E9 pencil comes from the Latin communiqu%E9 pencillus which means "little tail."

Some future before 1565 (some sources say as early as 1500), an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered on the approach to Grey Knotts from the hamlet of Seathwaite near Borrowdale parish, Cumbria, England. The Personalized Pencils locals found that it was ideal useful for marking sheep. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and solid, and it could easily be sawn into sticks. This was and remains the only generous ratio deposit of graphite ever found in this solid form. Chemistry was in its infancy and the substance was discerning to be a cast of lead. Consequently, it was called plumbago (Latin for "lead ore"). The jet core of pencils is still referred to as "lead," even though it never contained the element lead.