ACT English format and strategy overview quiz quiz

50 questions in 35 minutes, with 40 scored and 10 unscored field-test questions

75 questions in 45 minutes, all scored

40 questions in 60 minutes, all scored

100 questions in 50 minutes, with 50 scored

About 20

About 42

About 75

About 95

Knowledge of Language

Production of Writing

Conventions of Standard English

Reading Comprehension

Whether to add or delete a sentence

Subject-verb agreement and comma rules

The order of paragraphs

Effective, precise, concise word choice and consistent tone

Spend less time on fast grammar questions to bank time for slower rhetorical questions

Spend exactly 42 seconds on every question

Do all rhetorical questions first

Read every passage fully before answering anything

Leave them blank to avoid lowering your score

Enter a best guess for every one

Only answer the ones you are sure about

Skip the whole passage they belong to

Almost never; the underlined portion is always wrong

Only on rhetorical questions

About as often as any other option (roughly a quarter of the time)

Only on the first question of each passage

The longest, most detailed option

The option with the most punctuation

Whichever sounds most formal

The shortest option that preserves the meaning

Grammatical, then concise and consistent with the passage

Interesting, formal, and long

Loud, clear, and detailed

Spelled correctly, capitalized, and italicized

It always uses NO CHANGE as option A

It has a written stem (a question in words), not just an underlined portion

It is always the last question of a passage

It has five answer choices instead of four

Grammar, since one option must contain an error

Length, since the longest option says the most

Relevance to the stated goal: the option that most directly conveys speed

Tone, since the most formal option is best

The score scale changed from 1 to 36 to a percentage

The three scoring categories were replaced with new ones

Reading comprehension passages were added to the English section

The section got shorter: 50 questions in 35 minutes instead of 75 in 45