Oh, thank you. I shall certainly look into this. Writing with a non-disposable pen is more fun than I thought it would be, especially now that I don’t put more ink on myself than I do on the paper.
I think they are called biros here, because the firm that first patented the idea was called Biro. I think all they do now is live off the royalties…
Word doesn’t underline it, so maybe it’s even in the dictionary.
It would make sense…our “slang” term for a ball-point pen is “Bic”, which is also the company that makes them (it makes the best ball-points. I don’t know that it made them first.).
If I remember correctly Biro took Bic to court and won, so it’s Bic that pays them all the royalties probably.
The ballpoint pen was invented by Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian. See:
Biro is still the generic name used for the ballpoint pen in most of the world.
… but not in the US it seems… 
Nope. 
The thing I don’t like about ball-points is that they don’t lay down a smooth line. They’re all jerky and uneven. The ink doesn’t go on smoothly, and sometimes it doesn’t go on at all. Liquid ink is better, and my new calligraphy pen is best of all, at least in my opinion.
We call the cloggy lump of ink “ball pen dung” here. (And the word for “dung” in Korean is very similar to “dung”)
Bic actually sucks! I swear I go through a pen every week when I use Bic, and even after the first few days the ink stops coming out and I have to go over every single letter just to make it dark enough. Papermate is more reliable 
And more expensive. 
But Papermate has the same problem as all the other ball-points I’ve used. Clotting, lumps, jerky writing…I don’t care for them.