The Top 75 ACT English Question Types

Based on a sample of recent tests.

In order to make Grammarchops, Dave Lynch¹ and I analyzed the frequency of every question type from recent practice tests. I shared some of my observations in a previous post. Here is the list itself:

At Least 10 Per Test

Word choice: A broad category that includes style & tone, redundancy, figures of speech & prepositions, precise vocabulary choice, and commonly confused words.

Clauses: A broad category focused on making sure you have complete sentences and that multiple clauses within a sentence are properly joined.

Commas: A broad category that includes all the proper and improper uses of commas.

Phrases: A broad category that focuses on the construction and placement of all kinds of phrases, including prepositional, participial, and appositive phrases.

Around 7-8 Per Test

Other punctuation: Colons, semicolons, dashes, periods, parentheses, question marks, and quotation marks.

Transitions: A broad category covering transition words, transition sentences, introductions, and conclusions.

Specific tasks: Questions that ask you to accomplish a particular goal.

Around 5-6 Per Test

Pronouns & possessives: A broad category that includes pronoun agreement and apostrophe usage.

Verbs: Verb questions usually test either subject-verb agreement (singular vs. plural) or verb tense (present vs. past).

Redundancy: Don’t say the same thing twice. Blizzards is better than snowy blizzards. When the choices are repetitive, the shortest is almost always the best.

Sentence fragment: An error in which a sentence is incomplete. It’s missing either a main subject or a main verb.

Adding or removing: Should something be added to or removed from the passage? What would be lost or gained?

Main clause construction: How do we properly put together a complete sentence, with a subject and a verb?

Small picture task: “Which word most clearly expresses the reality that the Raiders have zero chance of winning the Super Bowl this year (or any other year)?”

Transition words: Pick the right transition, such as however, for example, therefore, moreover, indeed, still, consequently ... and many others. Read before and after the word, then ask yourself what the relationship is.

Around 4 Per Test

Nonessential phrase punctuation: If a phrase is not necessary, you can put “brackets” around it. Those brackets can be commas, parentheses, or dashes. Example: “The truth, however, was shocking.” You could get rid of however if you wanted to. Another example: “Ancient civilizations—using only rudimentary tools—had a surprisingly advanced understanding of the stars.”

Preposition / phrasal verb / figure of speech: Some words just go with other words for no other reason other than “that’s just how English is”: you “go for ice cream” but “decide on chocolate”. Why don’t you decide for chocolate?

Clear all commas: Many questions tempt you to add a bunch of unnecessary commas. When in doubt, no comma. That doesn’t mean the answer is always “no comma”—just that it’s best to err on the side of no comma if there’s no clear reason to use one.

Comma splice: A dreadful error in which you try to join two complete sentences using nothing but a comma. Example: “I like candy, I like movies.” This wickedness is waiting to trick you multiple times per test.

Participle instead of verb: An -ing word without a helping verb is not a verb. Example: “The musician carrying her violin.” Carrying sounds like a verb, but it isn’t, so this is a sentence fragment. Use is carrying or carried.

Around 3 Per Test

Essay organization: How should we rearrange the sentences or paragraphs? Where should something be inserted?

Verb agreement: The subject and verb must agree: “The plants in the garden (bloom / blooms) beautifully in the spring.” Singular subjects need singular verbs, and plural ones need plural.

Should the revision be made?: The answer is almost always some variation of one of these two options: “Yes, you should add this because it’s a new detail that’s relevant to the paragraph.” or “No, this is pretty random.”

Pronoun agreement: Singular nouns need singular pronouns, and plural ones need plural. An example of an error: “When artists use found objects, he or she can create amazing art.” (The pronoun should be they because artists is plural.)

Subject-verb interruption: Cross out the interruption between the subject and verb so that you can hear the agreement more clearly. Correct: “This book, like many others written by athletes, has many anecdotes.”

Trailing participial phrase: This is a phrase at the end of the sentence that gives you more information about the preceding situation. You need a comma before the phrase: “He hosted the competition every week for six months, attracting the fiercest arm wrestlers on the planet.”

Colons: They do not always come before a list!!! Sorry—had to get that out. Here is the main rule for the ACT: you must have a complete sentence before the colon. The colon itself acts like an arrow, but you can have anything after it—a word or phrase, a full sentence, and, yes, even a list.

Unpaired subjects or verbs: A common wrong answer type. Does each subject have a verb, and vice versa? Error: “With the change in weather means I’ll be wearing three sweatshirts today.” The verb means doesn’t have a subject.

Getting lost in detour: You start with a subject, talk about something else, and then never return to provide a verb: “This album, which highlights British Invasion, known for bands such as the Beatles.”

Semicolons: These are almost always used to separate two complete sentences: “She finished her homework early; she had the rest of the evening to relax.”

Prepositional phrase punctuation: Prepositions are words like of, in, to, for, and with. Prepositional phrases don’t typically need commas around them, unless they introduce the sentence or create a distinct pause. Unnecessary commas: “The book, on the table, has a red cover.” Good commas: “In 2015, she bought her first car.” “The mayor, along with several other town officials, took part in the festivities.”

Comma between things that belong together: Don’t separate a verb from its object with a comma. This is wrong: “The farmer grew, popcorn.” Don’t separate a modifier (like an adjective or prepositional phrase) from the noun it refers to: “He was on a quest to find the sweetest, candy bar.” Don’t separate a subject from its verb: “Although eating oatmeal, kale, and quinoa, was recommended, Frank opted for the mozzarella sticks.” The comma after quinoa is incorrect.

Around 2 Per Test

Goal of the essay: Did the author accomplish a certain goal with this passage? A reading comprehension question. Yes and no are equally likely. Whether it’s yes or no usually depends on whether the description is too narrow or broad. Like if they say that the passage is about the history of science, when it was actually about one scientist and her discovery, then it will be no.

Vocabulary: Which word has the right definition? “My father (attributed / designated / assigned / referred) the speedy refund to my outraged complaint.”

What would be lost?: A sort of reading comprehension question—it’s best to think of your own answer (“What is that part doing?”) before looking at the choices.

Verb tense: Use the past, present, or other appropriate tense to indicate when an action takes place. “The plane (lands / landed) last night.”

Clause-joining punctuation: A broad category that involves joining two clauses with a punctuation mark, like a semicolon, colon, or dash.

Commonly confused words: Things like affect / effect or cite / site.

Participial phrase construction: You can see this in any part of the sentence (intro phrase, nonessential phrase, end-of-sentence phrase). They often have -ing words: “He sat down at the table, hoping they would eat soon.”

Relative clause construction: Words like which and that are called relative pronouns and can create relative clauses. Make sure they’re formed and punctuated correctly. “She walked towards the piano that she had noticed earlier.” (The second half is a relative clause.)

Verb agreement shortcut: If they are testing singular / plural verbs, the answer that’s different from the other three is often correct (maybe 90-95% of the time).

Big picture task: “Given that all of the answers are accurate, which one best ends the essay with an indication of why...”

Its / their / etc.: The most commonly missed pronoun combination. Its is singular possessive: “The painting lost its vibrant colors after years of exposure to the sun.” Their is plural possessive: “The paintings lost their vibrant colors...” They’re is a contraction for they are. That leaves it’s, which is a contraction for it is or it has. Note that its’ is not a thing and will never be correct.

Who / whom / whose / which: Who is like I (a subject) and whom is like me (an object). “I throw the ball / Who throws the ball?” “Throw the ball to me. Throw the ball to whom?” You can often replace these words in the sentence and find the answer quickly. On the ACT, whom is very rarely the correct answer. Don’t use which to refer to people.

Comma usage in lists: Lists of two things don’t need a comma: “The visitors and residents enjoyed the forest.” Lists of three or more things need commas: “The visitors, residents, and bears enjoyed the forest.”

Run-on sentence: An error in which two complete sentences are squished into one without the proper punctuation.

Being: Beware of being. It’s fine when used as a helping verb or as a gerund, but using it to create a modifying phrase usually results in an awkward or unnecessarily wordy construction. It’s usually wrong on the ACT.

Introductory phrase punctuation: An introductory element before the main clause needs a comma.

Appositive phrase: An appositive is a noun phrase that describes another noun. You’ll have to decide whether it needs commas or not. An introductory appositive beginning with the, a, an, or one needs a comma: “An avid writer, Sarah published her first novel last year.” A nonessential appositive needs commas around it when it follows the noun it describes: “The river, a winding ribbon of blue, meandered through the valley.” An essential appositive before the noun it modifies does not need commas: “I was accompanied by cultural anthropologist Darren Becker on the tour.” (Cultural anthropologist is the appositive.)

Colon between things that belong together: You don’t want to put a colon between a modifier and a noun (“They found the remote: in the couch cushions.”) or between a verb and object (“He offered: $20 to the first kid to find the remote.”).

Around 1 per test

Idiomatic usage: Why do we say “help us to accept” but not “help us for accepting”? That’s just the way English works. There’s no clear rule. It’s hard to prepare for these.

Go naked: When given the choice between using a transition word like however or not, it’s almost always better to “go naked” (meaning don’t use a transition word—please keep your clothes on).

Subordinate clause: This has a subordinating conjunction such as although, because, or unless. It’s a clause with a subject and verb, but it can’t stand alone as a sentence. It needs a comma when it comes before the main clause: “Although the car looked nice, it often broke down.”

Wrong preposition: These are often idiomatic—why do we say “This is inconsistent with...” rather than “This is inconsistent to...”? It’s just how we say things.

Where to add: They ask you where a sentence belongs within the passage (typically asked at the end).

Create separate sentences: If you know there are two complete sentences, and separating them with a period is an option, pick that. “The play begins. An elderly man, ensconced in his newspaper, ignores his boisterous grandson, who playfully throws Legos at the ceiling.”

Dashes: These are used in two ways. Two dashes bracket nonessential phrases—you can use them instead of two commas or parentheses. One dash is used after a complete sentence and before additional info.

Style / tone: Pick the choice that’s not too slangy but not overly flowery.

Modifier placement: If a modifying phrase is in the wrong place, it will sound like it’s describing the wrong thing: “Oakland had always been home for Avery, a city near San Francisco.” This makes it sound like Avery is a city near San Francisco.

Transition sentence: In this type, the whole sentence is a transition, often between two paragraphs. You need to read before and after the transition to figure out the relationship, and make sure the choice you pick connects to the information on both sides.

Compound predicate: This is when one subject has two verbs: “I walked to the store and bought candy.” Because you can think of this as a list of two verbs, you don’t need a comma before and.

Name / title punctuation: The ACT loves to use a person’s role or job title as an essential appositive and their name as the noun. If the appositive comes before the noun, there’s no comma: “The team chose director of marketing Vivian Parks to lead the project.” If the appositive follows the noun, use commas: “The team chose Vivian Parks, director of marketing, to lead the project.”

Introductory modifier: Watch out for the noun right after introductory phrases—that noun must be the thing the intro phrase is referring to. Look at this sentence: “Unlike other animals, the eyesight of cats is extraordinary.” It makes it sound like the eyesight is unlike other animals, when you actually want to say that cats are unlike other animals.

Which is NOT acceptable?: This question type usually asks you to identify run-ons or incomplete sentences. Don’t pick a choice that’s grammatically correct!

Apostrophes: Mostly an issue for possession: “the cat’s claws are sharp” means one cat owns some sharp claws. For plural possessive, put the apostrophe after the s: “the actors’ union” is a union for multiple actors.

Around 50% of the Time

Missing comma before conjunction: If you are connecting two complete sentences with a FANBOYS conjunction, you need a comma before the conjunction: “She sent the letter by mail, but she realized that an email would have been faster.”

Conclusions: “Which of the following statements, if added here, would most effectively conclude the essay?”

Reordering sentences: An editing question that asks you to find the correct order of the sentences in a paragraph.

Coordinate / cumulative commas: If you could put and between the adjectives without changing the meaning (“the red, shiny apple” or “the red and shiny apple”), then you need a comma between them. Don’t put a comma between the final adjective and the noun.

Period / semicolon pair: If you see two answer choices with the same words, but one has a period and the other has a semicolon, both must be incorrect because they are the same answer. For example, if choice A is “expressions; they were” and choice B is “expressions. They were”, you can immediately kill both choices and focus your attention on C and D.

Comma after conjunction: This is an error. The comma belongs before the FANBOYS conjunction, not after: “I went to the store and, I bought some ice cream.”

Appropriate conjunction: Pick the conjunction with the right logical meaning. If there is a change in direction, the conjunction needs to be something like but, not and.

Irregular verb conjugation: These are verbs that don’t follow a typical conjugation pattern. You can’t say he begun or he had began. You’d have to say he began or he had begun.

Parallelism in a list: Items in a list must be parallel, meaning they must match, use the same part of speech, or have the same grammatical structure. This is correct: “He grabbed the book, threw it in his backpack, and ran out the door.” Grabbed, threw, and ran are all past tense verbs, so they match.

Pronoun vs. noun: If it’s unclear what the pronoun is replacing, just use a noun. “The scientists began the experiment.” is better than “They began the experiment.” Don’t worry about being repetitive in this case.

If you’d like to practice these questions, visit grammarchops.com, or add ACT Grammar to your existing Mathchops account.

1. Dave did all the heavy lifting here.