Open cloze

Few skills have fallen 1. of favour quite as quickly as joined-up handwriting. A generation ago, children spent hours copying out loops and flourishes; today many leave school 2. ever having been taught to write in a continuous hand. 3. this matters is a question that divides teachers. Some insist that the physical act of forming letters helps children to remember what they are learning, and point to research suggesting that students who take notes by hand recall more 4. those who type. Others reply that it makes little sense to devote precious lesson time to a skill that most adults now use hardly 5. all. What is rarely mentioned is that handwriting has always been closely tied 6. the technology of its day. The elegant scripts we admire in old letters owed as 7. to the steel-nibbed pen, and before that to the quill, as to any natural talent. If the keyboard has made them obsolete, that is 8. more than history repeating itself.