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ACT® · Reading — Key Ideas and Details: Close Reading

Locating Important Details

Locating important details means finding the facts a passage's argument actually depends on, not just any true statement in the text. Important details are the ones a question would be pointless without.

Watch it drawn4 questionsPractice

A passage can hand you ten facts and only use two of them. The test checks whether you can tell load-bearing details from decoration, because real comprehension means knowing what a text is doing with its information, not just what information it contains. A detail is important when the passage's claim would collapse or change without it. A detail is minor when you could delete it and the argument stands exactly as before.

Picture a detail tree. The trunk is the passage's central claim, the point it is actually trying to make. Branches connect to the trunk: these are the details the claim needs to work, and they usually show up right before or after language like 'this shows,' 'as a result,' 'the reason,' or a contrast word like 'though' or 'but.' Leaves hang off the tree without holding anything up: dates, colors, counts, incidental description. On a first read, do not try to memorize every leaf. Instead, find the sentence that states or implies the author's point, then ask which nearby facts that sentence leans on. Those are what a nine-question set will keep returning to, since question writers build questions around the branches, not the scenery.

This is the base skill under every other Key Ideas and Details question. Paraphrasing asks you to restate a branch accurately; drawing conclusions asks you to extend a branch one logical step further. If you cannot find the load-bearing detail first, both of those tasks turn into guesswork. And because the same set of facts can serve different claims, this skill also forces you to reread the passage's purpose, not just its content, whenever the claim shifts.

Key terms

Load-bearing detail
A fact the passage's central claim depends on, which would weaken the argument if removed.
Detail tree
A way of mapping a passage with the central claim as the trunk and supporting facts as branches or leaves.
Central claim
The main point a passage or paragraph is arguing for or building toward.
Paraphrase
A restatement of a detail or claim in different words that keeps its exact meaning.

Watch it explained

  1. How it worksHow does a detail tree separate load-bearing branches from leaves you can forget?
  2. How it worksHow do you tell during a first read which details a nine-question set will actually use?
  3. Worked exampleShow me picking the two important details out of a paragraph listing six facts about a glacier.
  4. Going furtherWhat changes about which details matter when the same text carries a different central claim?

Check yourself

Your turneasy1 of 3
Informational passage: The Rhone Glacier has been measured every summer since 1881. The ice is grey with rock flour near its snout, a cave is cut into it for visitors each June, and its meltwater reaches 12 villages down the valley. Two facts, though, carry the argument that follows. The first is that the glacier's front has drawn back 1666 metres since the measurements began. The second is that the retreat has not been steady: three-quarters of it has come since 1980. A glacier shrinking at an even rate would suggest a slow, old process. This one does not, and the uneven curve is what researchers point to when they tie the ice to a warming that began within living memory. Which detail does the passage present as load-bearing for the researchers' argument?

End of topic.

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