Pen15 Club: Making a Pen Loop for Your Crummy Work Steno Pad

At work, I generally carry a steno pad, one of those top-bound bad-paper, 6" by 9" jobs that most office supply closets seem to be full of (except at my office, the last couple years, during which stretch admin has refused to buy these anymore for some reason). They are the platonic ideal of a thing to use at work that's ... fine. Basically fine. They take a bit of a beating and tend to get used up before they get worn out, they're easy to hold and use one-handed, standing, etc., they're ... fine.

One lackful area, howevs, is that they're not THAT that easy to attach a pen to. Some folk'll stuff one into the spiral ring binding up top, but I don't, and won't. But what I will do is mess around with duct tape to make a satisfactory-to-me solution, which I shall detail below.

A Process for Creating a Pen Loop

1. First, gather your tools. You will need:
1. A steno pad
2. A roll of duct tape
3. A scissors
4. The pens you will want to use with that steno pad—I show here three favorite work pens: Bic Re'Nu; Zebra bLen 3C; Pilot Precise V5

5. A binder clip
6. A clean, well-lighted place and a flat surface on which to work (with enough gravity to hold your items on the surface without you having to worry about it)
2. Second, select the girthiest pen you will use with this notebook—in my case, this will be the bLen, but if you want to futureproof this part, a Sharpie or MarksALot might be the thing to reach for
3. Third, get yourself a length of duct tape and wrap it sticky side out around the pen a couple times and cut it off cleanly, using a scissors

4. Fourth, put the pen in the binder clip and set it aside. This is so the sticky tube of duct tape doesn't touch anything and therefore doesn't stick to anything you don't want it to stick to
5. Fifth, starting on the inside back cover of the steno pad, about where you'd like the pen loop to be, run a single strip of duct tape horizontally across the inside, then the outside, of the cover, leaving enough of a strip to not quite make it all the way across the inside cover a second time

6. Sixth: the tricky part. With the strip of duct tape lying sticky-side up, carefully line up the sticky-side-out tube of duct tape you made earlier with that strip, and place it about a pen width away from the edge of the back cover of the steno pad
   This is tricky, because the stickiest substances in the world are the two pieces of sticky-side duct tape, when they contact each other, and if the two pieces touch when they are in the wrong spot or orientation, you will be irritated and may have to make another tube
   Leaving the pen in the tube will help you manipulate and position it

7. Seventh: Cut off the strip of tape, if you have not already, leaving enough to cover all the sticky-side tape remaining, and smooth out any bubbles or wrinkles or w/e
8. You now have a duct tape pen loop that will not leave (much) duct tape residue on your pen! Great job!

NOTE: This will only work with pens that have clips. If you have a pen without a clip and want to try this approach it won't work. I don't know of an approach that WILL work. Maybe there's a way to attach a clipless pen to a work steno pad; I don't know. Frankly, I don't want to know. It's a market we could do without.