There are many things which we see and use everyday, but never pay attention or care to find reasons why these things are designed in certain ways, pen lids or caps are one of them. We all use ball ink pens and noticed that there lids have a hole. There is an important reason for the hole at the top a pen lid but along with that there are many speculations too.

SPECULATIONS:
1) A common speculation is, it was made to dry the ink faster. Few people believe that holes at the end helps drying the ink on the pen nib making it slightly harder to use each time you start writing with it and hence decreases the ink life and companies did this to increase there sale by forcing you to buy more pens, but this is not the exact reason as drying the ink will decreases performance and ultimately affect there sale in negative way.

2) Another common speculation is, it is to equalizing the air pressure that help in easier opening and closing of lids, but this is also not the case as it can be prevented by making holes on any side of lid or by making lids that can be screwed.

What’s the exact reason?

To prevent suffocation in case cap get swallowed.

We all use them and some of us even can’t help chewing on them, especially the caps.

The hole in the cap is added as a safety measure to prevent total asphyxiation if cap get swallowed and stuck in your throat. Today around 100 people choke to death on pen lids in the US every year. Before the hole in the cap the number used to be a lot higher