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Out of the box, a mortising gauge is a beautiful thing, but a bear to work with. The whole point if using one is accuracy. However, if you try to scratch a clear, straight line with the points as they come from the factory, you are going to find that the grain and other characteristics of the wood will drag your tool off your line, and it will be a rough, hard to read cut anyway.
There is a simple solution. Take a fine mill file and file the circular point that the tool came with into a blade. And file it sharp. I usually touch mine up with some 400X, 600X, then 800X silicon carbide wet/dry paper. That hones it to perfection. Make sure that the long axis of the blade you just madde is parallel to the tool fence. This is what I mean. You will see that I left some file marks on my gauge by accident. You could wrap yours with masking tape before doing this to prevent the marks.
As you can see, a tuned gauge leaves a much more accurate and finer mark. Here is a bit of a blurry close-up that further illustrates the point. These pictures were taken of a piece of mahogany that was marked across the grain. On some woods, when marking with the grain, squirrely grain patterns can trap unhoned points drawing you away from the line you are trying to mark. This can be messy.
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