ACT Reading Question Types

ACT Reading questions are organized into three reporting categories. Key Ideas & Details dominates at 52-60% of questions, followed by Craft & Structure at 25-30%, and Integration of Knowledge & Ideas at 13-23%. Each guide below covers every skill tested within that category, with strategies and practice questions.

Key Ideas & Details

Central idea and theme, significant details, inferences and conclusions, summarizing, vocabulary in context, sequence of events, and cause and effect. The most heavily tested category.

Craft & Structure

Text structure, author's purpose, perspective and point of view, word choice and rhetoric, and tone and style. These questions focus on how the passage is written rather than what it says.

Integration of Knowledge & Ideas

Comparing across texts, fact vs. opinion, evaluating claims, reasoning and evidence, argument construction, generalizing from evidence, visual elements, synthesizing information, textual evidence, and multiple perspectives.