Read the fallowing passage and then answer the multiple-choice questions that follow. The questions will require you to make decisions regarding the revision of the reading selection.
(1) Take a look at your #2 pencil that is, if Y\ou have not abandoned it for a mechanical pencil. (2) Excluding the eraser, the #2 pencil is made of two materials: wood and graphite. (3) It has no moving parts. ( 4) It is long lasting, but the frail point must be sharpened constantly. (5) Indeed, the pencil is primitive in this age of wireless links, touch-screen monitors, and MP3 players. (6) Just how old is this invention? (7) Why do we still use it when there are better alternatives? (8) And just how do they stuff that lead into the wood, anyway? (9) The answers began in Egypt, 4,000 years ago. (10) Some time between pyramid-building and mummy-making, Egyptians learned that they could make paper, or papyrus, out of big weeds that gtow along the Nile River banks. (11) Egyptians used pieces of lead or other soft:minerals to write notes on this early personal stationery.
(12) Papyrus and lead eventually made it to the ancient Romans, who prided themselves on their many advancements and high quality of life. (13) Because they knew the importance of being seen writing, they had already invented the stylus, a pen-sized, sometimes orn.ate, sharp metal stick, to carve letters into wax tablets. (14) Styli made oflead were tried by Romans to write on paper, but the puny sticks left only faint marks, so writers switched to lead discs that could withstand greater writing pressure. (15) To create their most important documents, Romans painted words with a pencillus, or small brush. (16) When the Roman Empire faltered and collapsed, so did advancement of the pencil. (17) The quill eventually replaced the pencillus in a prelude to the modern pen, but not until the sixteenth century did the pencil experience a major change. (17) That is when the English discovered an extremely rare deposit of graphite, or pure carbon, in northwest England's Cumbria region. (18) The graphite was so pure and solid that it could be sawed off in sheets and cut into sticks. (19) It immediately proved useful in pencils, and soon artists were carving square handles out of wood to hold the graphite rods, or leads (discoverers assumed erroneously that carbon was simply a form of lead). (20) The first pencils made by artists were rectangular, not cylindrical. (21) England held a monopoly on graphite pencils until 1662, when Germans found that mixing graphite powder (separated from impure ore) with lead and antimony made it solid enough to use in pencils. (22) It worked, but not nearly as well as the pure graphite. (23) England enjoyed its monopoly for another century. (24) During the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1801), England blocked the export of graphite, leaving Napoleon with no way to write ruthless military strategies or complete his favorite crossword puzzles. (25) French scientist Nicholas-Jacques Conte solved the problem in 1795 by adding clay to graphite powder and then firing the mixture in a kiln. (26) The pencils were superb, and adjusting the hardness of the lead was a simple matter of changing the amount of clay in the mixture. (27) Conte had invented the modem pencil. (28) The pencil has been perfected further since 1795, but its design and materials are essentially unchanged. (29) Pencil manufacturing, on the other hand, has certainly changed. (30) No, no one sits in a factory all day and drills holes in pencils the wooden handle of a pencil is, in fact, two halves glued together after the lead is set in place. (31) A nice paint job hides the seam. (32) Who knows what the future has in store for the pencil?
The underlined portion of sentence 14 is best improved by which revision?
Styli made of lead were tried by Romans to write on paper but the puny sticks left only faint marks, so writers switched to lead discs that could withstand greater writing pressure.
A. Romans did not try to write on paper with lead,
B. A lead stylus does not write on paper,
C. The lead did not work well on paper,
D. Lead styli were too soft to use on paper by the Romans,
E. Romans tried using lead styli on paper,
