How to Use in pencil in a Sentence
in pencil
idiom-
Draw in pencil and paint over the design with white paint.
—Megan Boettcher, Better Homes & Gardens, 28 Aug. 2022
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The letters are short, to the point, printed neatly in pencil.
—Ellen Bartlett, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Dec. 2022
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The painting, which was sold with a certificate, is signed in pencil by Charles with the year marked 2001.
—Janine Henni, Peoplemag, 27 Dec. 2022
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The painting, which was sold with a certificate, is signed in pencil by Charles with the year marked as 2001.
—Stephanie Petit, Peoplemag, 21 Oct. 2022
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Any plans for this season should have been written in pencil, not ink.
—J. Brady McCollough Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 8 Dec. 2020
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Outline the notch in pencil on each side by measuring ½ in.
—Tim Faszer, Popular Mechanics, 13 Mar. 2021
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Charles made the painting in 2001, and the print is signed and dated in pencil, according to the auction listing.
—CNN, 19 Oct. 2022
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Finally, the stories first sketched out in pencil many years ago can start to be written in ink.
—Quanta Magazine, 1 Feb. 2021
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Playlists written in pencil could be erased and rewritten as a predilection for the Pretenders gave way to the allure of the Allman Brothers Band.
—Mike Kerrigan, WSJ, 26 Mar. 2021
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The books in pencil were the real numbers, and the books in ink showed a lesser profit, for the Internal Revenue Service.
—Bert Stratton, wsj.com, 5 Apr. 2023
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The final section in pencil, pastel and collage depicts the feet of a wooden doll set upon a sort of pedestal.
—John Zotos, Dallas News, 11 Aug. 2020
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Computations marked in pencil on the walls scaled up the cost of entry by increments of $1.50, the price of a single ticket.
—Vince Guerrieri, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Mar. 2023
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Coronavirus is forcing every level of organized football, from the pros to preps, to go from plans in stone to plans in pencil.
—Sean Keeler, The Denver Post, 5 July 2020
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Hall sketched it in pencil before architects at Florence, Italy’s Studio 63 rendered it to be produced on-site.
—Caitlin Kelly Ella Riley-Adams Megan O’Sullivan Arden Fanning Andrews Angela Koh Zoe Ruffner, New York Times, 9 Feb. 2023
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As of Wednesday morning, the Alabama roster for the Sugar Bowl remains written in pencil.
—Michael Casagrande | McAsagrande@al.com, al, 7 Dec. 2022
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Albert took the Stanford Achievement Test in both reading and arithmetic; the actual tests are still part of the file, featuring his answers written in pencil.
—BostonGlobe.com, 14 May 2022
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The Major League Baseball schedule may as well be written in pencil nowadays, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.
—Kirkland Crawford, Detroit Free Press, 2 Aug. 2020
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Cézanne is known to have produced more than two dozen self-portraits, though almost all of them were completed after the 1860s and were largely executed in pencil.
—Oscar Holland, CNN, 14 Dec. 2022
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Around 120 animators from around the world collaborated on the animation, which was drawn first in pencil and then inked over and hand-painted.
—Emily Zemler, Los Angeles Times, 1 Mar. 2023
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The show does contain a few paintings, but its primary focus is on O’Keeffe’s watercolors, her pastels, and her drawings in pencil and charcoal.
—Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 11 May 2023
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Any such list of potential doomsdays should be written in pencil, since the future is reliably unpredictable.
—Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2022
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The Notre Dame home opener is set for Sept. 12 against Arkansas, but so many details regarding that game are either scribbled in pencil or trapped in the hypothetical for now.
—Eric Hansen, Indianapolis Star, 2 June 2020
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Sargent carefully indicates most of the detail in pencil lines, with simple brushstrokes of gray wash against the warm tones of venerable marble walls and pilasters.
—Barrymore Laurence Scherer, WSJ, 29 Oct. 2022
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But more than a month before those games are scheduled to start, conference contingency plans probably belong in pencil rather than headline type.
—Tim Sullivan, The Courier-Journal, 31 July 2020
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In his brief tenure as the University of Louisville’s head football coach, Satterfield has learned that complex plans are to be authored in pencil and that autonomy can be synonymous with anarchy.
—Tim Sullivan, The Courier-Journal, 11 Aug. 2020
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Twenty years later, Montgomery’s school district lines were worked and re-worked, as if drawn in pencil—families, black and white, shuffled their children to and from the city’s predominantly Black and predominantly white schools.
—Roy S. Johnson | Rjohnson@al.com, al, 18 Apr. 2022
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The watercolor reflects a way of seeing in which Cezanne appears to rebuild nature through solid forms sketched in pencil and brushed in transparent planes of color, separated by blank areas of paper.
—cleveland, 9 Jan. 2022
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Miller wrote the scripts, drew the pages in pencil, pioneered the visual storytelling techniques that made reading the comic such an exciting experience for fans, and conceived of the distinctive character designs.
—Rob Salkowitz, Forbes, 21 June 2022
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Not only were the payments recorded inaccurately, but were done in pencil, so the numbers could later be changed, according to an order filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in federal court.
—Ed Silverman, STAT, 2 July 2020
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'in pencil.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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