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What the abbreviations on the pencils mean

The degree of hardness of a pencil is printed on the pencil. The degrees of hardness of pencils are roughly divided into four groups:
B stands for "black". These pencils are soft.
H stands for "hard".
HB stands for "hard black", which means "medium hard".
F stands for "firm".
Sometimes the alphabetic characters are preceded by numbers. They make an even more precise statement about the degree of hardness or colour intensity of the pencil. The higher the number, the harder, softer or blacker the pencil is.

By the way: Lead has never been contained in graphite pencils. They consist of a mixture of clay and graphite.