Multiple-choice cloze
For questions 1-8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.
Few everyday objects are as easy to take for as the pencil. Yet when a large deposit of pure graphite was found in northern England in the sixteenth century, it was considered so valuable that the mine was guarded day and night. Early users simply wrapped sticks of it in string or sheepskin, and it was some time before anyone on the idea of encasing it in wood. Modern pencils owe a great to a later technique in which powdered graphite is mixed with clay and baked; by changing the proportions, manufacturers can produce leads that range from very hard to very soft. Despite competition from the ballpoint pen and, later, the keyboard, the pencil has its own remarkably well. Artists value the fact that a line can be erased, and architects have long used it for rough sketches that are later over in ink. It also writes in freezing temperatures and at awkward angles, and, by and , it remains the most dependable writing tool there is. its apparent simplicity, a modern pencil passes through dozens of stages in production. For something so ordinary, it has proved remarkably difficult to .
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