Sometimes you want a highlighter with a certain chisel tip size to match the spacing in a dot grid notebook, larger highlighters for headings, thinner highlighters for underlining etc. I’d often want a highlighter at a certain tip size but could never remember the sizes for each of the many highlighters I’ve hoarded over the years. So here’s a list of the tip sizes for what seems to be the most popular highlighters (if there’s any missing on the list, please comment below, I may have the highlighter and just didn’t add it to the list if it’s not popular).

Keep in mind that the more you use highlighters (much like pens) you ‘break them in’ and the tips become not as sharp as they were when you first bought them. The angle and pressure you apply will affect the chisel thickness as well. I tried to apply full pressure to each of these so you see the ‘maximum’ thickness the highlighter can do.

6mm tip

I know it’s not a highlighter but I wanted to include the Tombow brush pens so you could see the different in thickness between brush pens and highighters. I gave up trying to hand-letter, I just couldn’t get it to look pretty like all those YouTube videos you see! So now I use them like highlighters.

Note: if you do want to use your brush pens for brush lettering, don’t use them as highlighters. Writing on notebook paper (not smooth) can make the tips blunt.

5mm chisel tip

Most dot grid notebooks have 5mm grid spacing so if you want a highlighter that doesn’t leave any white space in between the highlighter and the dots, use a 5mm chisel tip.