Writing implements:

Aside from their quills and inkwells, scribes also needed a surface on which to lean while writing.  They generally used lapboards in the early medieval period and desks in the mid-to-late medieval periods.  Lapboards could come in any shape and size, though desks "were normally tilted," though some illustrations do show flat desks (Graham and Clemens 20). Desks in the late medieval period frequently included "an upper tier, at or somewhat above eye level, on which the scribe could set th exemplar being copied" (Graham and Clemens 20).

Additionally, scribes would use a penknife which served multiple purposes: it was useful for sharpening a quickly-dulling quill, for steadying the naturally-springy parchment page, and for erasing mistakes a scribe might make during transcription.  The penknife would allow scribes to scrape off errors on the parchment before the ink had time to set or sink in. Graham and Clemens note that "often it is possible to detect areas of roughened parchment in a manuscript where such corrections have been made; sometimes, sufficient traces of ink remain to read the original, erased text" (18).

To the right is a manuscript which has been heavily edited by a second scribe.  Portions of the text have been scraped away with a penknife, resulting in the blurry appearance of several of the lines, and then rewritten in a different hand.  While it is not possible to read the removed text, traces of it certainly remain, and we are able to distinguish added text from original text as a result.