Illiteracy may be considered more as an abstract concept than a condition. When a famous English writer used the (1)_____ over two hundred years ago, he was actually (2)_____ to people who could (3)_____ read Greek or Latin. (4)_____,it seems unlikely that university examiners had this sort of (5)_____ in mind when they reported on 'creeping illiteracy' in a report on their students' final examination in 1988. (6)_____ the years, university lecturers have been (7)_____ of an increasing tendency towards grammatical sloppiness, poor spelling and general imprecision (8)_____ their students' ways of writing and sloppy writing is all (9)_____ often a reflection of sloppy thinking. Their (10)_____ was that they had (11)_____ to do teaching their own subject (12)_____ teaching their undergraduates to write. Some lecturers believe that they have a(n) (13)_____ to stress the importance of maintaining standards of dear thinking (14)_____ the written word in a world dominated by (15)_____ communications and images. They (16)_____ on the connection between clear thinking and a form. of writing that is not only clear, but also sensitive to (17)_____ of meaning. The same lecturers argue that undergraduates appear to be the victims of a 'softening process' that begins (18)_____ the teaching of English in schools, but this point of view has, not (19)_____, mused a great deal of (20)_____.