Use of English
Open Cloze - Example 2

Part 2

For questions 9-16, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS on the separate answer sheet.

Handwriting

About six months ago, I realised I had (0) _______________ idea what the handwriting of a good friend of mine looked like. We had always communicated by email and text but never by a handwritten letter. And it struck me that we are at a moment (9) _______________ handwriting seems to be about to vanish from our lives altogether. (10) _______________ some point in recent years, it stopped (11) _______________ a necessary and inevitable intermediary between people - a means by (12) _______________ individuals communicate with each other, putting a little bit of their personality (13) _______________ the form of the message as they press the ink-bearing point onto the paper. It has started to become just (14) _______________ among many options, often considered unattractive and elaborate. 

For each of us, the act of putting marks on paper with ink goes back as (15) _______________ as we can remember. Our handwriting, like ourselves, seems always to have been there. But now, given that most of us communicate via email and text, have we lost (16) _______________ crucial to the human experience?