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A "y" formed by nine nanoscale recording marks (see Figure) has been made successfully on an organic thin film by applying voltage pulses between a scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) tip and the highly ordered pyrolytic graphite substrate. The average size of the recorded marks is 1.1 nm in diameter, corresponding to a data storage density of similar to 10(13) bits cm(-2). The recording mechanism is discussed according to experiment and calculation.