Precis Writing - Model 1 - Passage and its Precis

Write a precis in your words of the following passage in about seventy words.

The first thing necessary to the pleasure of reading is that when people are young they should acquire the habit of reading. This is becoming more and more difficult. Before I was aware of things in the world, the penny post had already begun make a change adverse to reading by consuming a vast amount of time in correspondence that was unnecessary, trivial or irksome. Railways have altered people’s habit by making them move about much more. But railways have this compensating advantage that, although they take people much away from home, a long railway journey affords a first rate opportunity for reading. They are not, therefore, an unmixed disadvantage. But now things are changing. The motor-car is altogether unfavourable to reading. People consume more time in moving about than they did and they consume it under conditions which, even, for people with good eyes, must make reading difficult, if not impossible. The telephone is a deadly disadvantage; it minces time into fragments and slays the spirit. Wireless, with all its delights, is now being added as a distraction to divert people from time that might be given to the pleasure of reading. All these things must make it more difficult for successive generations to acquire the habit of reading, and if that habit be acquired, to maintain it. Even before all these changes, it was not easy to maintain the habit, but it could be done.

A further disadvantage to reading is the great development of picture papers. Picture papers are tending to divert people not only from reading, but from thought. where one used to see people get into a railway carriage and settle down to a book, they now come with an armful of picture papers and look at the pictures with more or less transient amusement, one after the other, and so pass the time. I found the other day a person who during the war between the Turks and Greeks expressed an opinion and favour of the Turks because he or she (I will not reveal even the sex) said that, judging by the pictures in the papers, Mustafa Kamal ooked rather a good sort of fellow. 

Precis of the above passage

Answer: 

People should acquire the habit of reading in their youth. There are many obstacles to it. The Penny Post encourages unnecessary correspondence. Railways make people move about too much although a long journey enables a man to read well. But motor cars make reading almost impossible. The telephone, the wireless, the cinema and flying are other distractions which make it difficult to maintain the habit of reading when acquired. Picture parers hinder reading and thinking both.