The enhanced ACT English format: 50 questions in 35 minutes (40 scored, 10 field-test), short passages presented as drafts with underlined portions, four answer choices including NO CHANGE, scored 1 to 36, and how that structure should drive your reading and pacing.

What this topic is asking

Before you correct a single underlined portion, you need a clear mental model of how the ACT English section is built, because the structure decides how you read the passages and how you spend your 35 minutes. The section was shortened in 2025 as part of the "enhanced ACT", so an accurate picture of the current format matters: studying from old descriptions can leave you expecting the wrong number of questions and the wrong pace.

The structure of the section

ACT English is one of the core sections of the ACT, alongside Mathematics and Reading (Science is now optional). It is delivered as a set of passages with questions embedded in them.

Two kinds of question appear. The first, and most common, is the underlined-portion question: a number marks a portion of the passage, and you choose the best version of it from four options. The first option is almost always NO CHANGE, meaning the original is already correct. The second kind is the whole-passage or rhetorical question, marked by a boxed number or a question in the margin, which asks about adding or deleting a sentence, the best place for a sentence, or whether the writer met a goal.

What changed from the legacy ACT

The 2025 enhancements made the section shorter and slightly less rushed, but did not change what is tested or how it is scored.

• Legacy: 75 questions in 45 minutes (about 36 seconds per question), five long passages of roughly 15 questions each.
• Enhanced: 50 questions in 35 minutes (about 42 seconds per question), shorter passages carrying fewer questions each.
• Unchanged: the 1 to 36 scale, the three reporting categories, and the grammar, punctuation, usage, style, and rhetoric content.

The enhanced format reached the national online test in April 2025, all national administrations (paper and online) in September 2025, and school-day testing in spring 2026. This matters when you buy practice materials: older books built for 75 questions are still useful for the skills, but their timing and question counts are out of date.

Why the format should change how you read

The passage-with-underlined-portions design rewards a specific reading habit. You do not read the whole passage first and then answer; instead you read through the passage in order, stopping at each underlined portion to answer as you reach it, because most grammar and punctuation questions only need the sentence around them. The exception is the rhetorical questions, which often require the surrounding paragraph or the whole passage, so you handle those with the context you have built by reading in order.

How the structure should drive your behaviour

Because there is no guessing penalty, you never leave a blank: every question gets an answer, even if it is a quick best guess on a hard rhetorical item. Because the section is 40 scored questions in 35 minutes, you keep a brisk pace on the grammar questions, which are fast, to protect time for the rhetorical questions, which take longer. And because the first option is usually NO CHANGE, you treat "the original is fine" as a real, common answer rather than assuming something must be changed. Knowing the format turns the section from a vague grammar quiz into a predictable, paceable routine.

Try this

Q1. How many questions on the enhanced ACT English section are scored, and how long is the section? [Recall]

• Cue. 40 of the 50 questions are scored (10 are unscored field-test questions), and the section is 35 minutes long, giving about 42 seconds per question.

Q2. Why should you read to the end of the sentence before answering an underlined-portion question? [Short explanation]

• Cue. The underlined portion has to fit grammatically and stylistically into the whole sentence. The error (or the best fix) often depends on words after the underline, such as the verb's subject or a later clause, so reading only up to the underline can hide what the question is testing.