ACT® · Reading — Craft and Structure: Purpose and Point of View
Authorial Bias and Perspective
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow do selection, ordering and word choice tilt a text without a single false claim?
- Worked exampleShow me the bias in a text giving one side four paragraphs and the other side two lines.
- Going furtherWhat changes about bias when an author is quoting people they disagree with?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a text with no emotional language automatically unbiased?
Check yourself
Your turneasy1 of 3
Informational passage:
The case for the bypass takes up most of this article, and it is a good case: 25 thousand vehicles a day through a street built for carts, 69 percent of them with no business in the town at all, and a fall of 12 decibels predicted for the high street. The modelling behind that figure runs to two pages, with the assumptions listed and the traffic counts given hour by hour.
The case against is that the route crosses a floodplain. Opponents say so. No figure is attached to the claim here.
The passage tilts its reader chiefly by:End of topic.