ACT Reading Craft and Structure: words in context, purpose, structure, tone, and voice - complete overview

Craft and Structure is the second-largest ACT Reading reporting category, about 25 to 30 percent of the section. It groups the skills of reading how a passage is made, not just what it says. This site breaks the category into five dot points, from words in context to narrative voice. This overview maps the five skills, how they connect, and how to study them.

The five Craft and Structure skills

Each skill is a way of reading the author's choices.

• Words and phrases in context. Determining meaning from how the passage uses a word, expecting secondary senses. See words and phrases in context.
• Author's purpose and point of view. Naming why a passage was written and the author's stance, and how they shape it. See author's purpose and point of view.
• Text structure and organization. Recognizing the organizing pattern and a part's function within it. See text structure and organization.
• Tone and word choice. Reading the attitude conveyed by connotation and diction. See tone and word choice.
• Characters and narrative voice. Inferring traits and reading how point of view controls what you know. See characters and narrative voice.

The thread through every skill: language and effect

Two ideas tie the category together. The first is close attention to language: meaning, tone, and voice all live in word choice and connotation, so the category rewards reading how things are said, not only what is said. The second is effect: the ACT wants you to explain what an author's choice does, how a point of view filters knowledge, how a structure organizes a point, how an admiring stance selects details. Naming the feature is the floor; explaining its effect is where the marks are. Read the craft, then read what the craft accomplishes.

How the skills are tested

• Word-in-context questions: what a word or phrase most nearly means as the passage uses it.
• Purpose, structure, and tone questions: why the passage was written, how it is organized, and the attitude it conveys.
• Character and voice questions: what a character is like and how the narration shapes what the reader is shown.

How to study Craft and Structure

1. Substitute for word-in-context. Read the surrounding sentences and test each candidate meaning in the sentence.
2. Read stance from patterns. Infer purpose and point of view from word choice across the passage, not one line.
3. Map the structure early. Note each paragraph's job so function questions are quick.
4. Calibrate tone. Match the exact degree of feeling; do not overshoot a mild passage.
5. Read character as evidence. Use STEAL, and always pair a point of view with its effect.

For the official exam materials

ACT publishes the Reading standards and reporting categories and free official practice. See the ACT Reading standards page and the ACT exam sections and structure page. Always study from the current official materials, because the reporting categories and the question style are set by ACT.