ACT® · Reading — Key Ideas and Details: Close Reading
Minor or Subtly Stated Details
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does a subtly stated detail hide inside a subordinate clause instead of a main one?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a detail you cannot find by keyword search simply absent from the text?
- Worked exampleShow me recovering a narrator's age from a line that only mentions a war and a school year.
- Going furtherWhat happens to subtle-detail questions when the writing is dense with figurative language?
Check yourself
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Literary Narrative passage:
I was in my last year of school when the news came about my uncle, and the headmaster read it out before the hymn. That was 1917. My mother had already sewn the black band onto my coat sleeve, which meant she had known since the evening before and had let me sleep. I remember thinking, in the queer way of a boy who has learned nothing yet, that the coat would be too small by winter and someone would have to buy another. My uncle had gone out in 1915, in the first month of it, with a company of men from our street, and had written home once, about the food.
Approximately how old is the narrator at the moment the headmaster reads out the news?End of topic.