I see in some books the authors call a one dimensional linear system a pencil, but in other books one call a linear system $|D|$ is not compsited with a pencil if $\dim \phi\_{|D|}(X)\geq 2$ and even someone just say a pencil of curves etc. It seems these terms have different meanings. My question is the following. 


What is the common pointview about the notion of a pencil? What is the realtions among above terms?



What's the meaning of pencils in birational geometry?
Well, I think this is kind of an antiquated terminology and I think it is going out of use (hopefully). I believe the classical meaning of a pencil was a 1-dimensional linear system of curves (whose members are connected) on a surface. In other words, calling the equivalent notion a pencil (in arbitrary dimensions) is just a generalization of the notion of a pencil of curves. The only not-necessarily-obvious usage is the expression *not-composite-with-a-pencil*. 
The point is, that by a pencil of curves they meant a surface fibred over a curve with *connected fibers*. I am sure that when this was originally invented they did not yet talk about fibrations and such. Anyway, the point is, if you say your linear system is one dimensional it could still be a fibration followed by a finite map, that is, the composition of a pencil and another map, so your original linear system is *composite-with-a-pencil*.


