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One of the trickier concepts that you will be tested on ACT English is your ability to choose the right word from among many that are not quite right, and to spot when words are being used incorrectly.

Are you confident in your ability to find the differences in a group of similar words? Can you distinguish what’s needed from the context of a question?

If you’re not so sure, read on to see how the ACT English will test you on this skill! In this post, I'll cover everything you need to know about these questions:

What Does “Diction” Mean, Anyway?

Diction is a fancy synonym for “word choice” - you may have heard your literature teacher talk about it when analyzing a famous author’s writing style. 

On the ACT English, there are three main ways that word choice becomes important:

• recognizing commonly confused words
• understanding meaning in context
• recognizing idiomatic uses of phrases with prepositions 

This final topic is large enough that we have a whole separate article dedicated to it.

But for the first two, let's look at some example sentences that illustrate these concepts.

Answers: 1. B; 2. D

How did you do? These questions cover two of the most common types of diction errors that you will see on ACT English – commonly confused words and understanding meaning in context. Both of these test your ability to understand when a word is being used incorrectly. I’ll go into each of these question types in more detail below.

But first, let’s talk about why ACT English has diction errors in the first place.

Why Diction Errors?

ACT English basically tests your ability to be an editor. The ACT wants to see if you can spot and correct errors in short passages. This skill is important for college level work, such as writing papers.

Most of the ACT English questions focus on grammar, punctuation and style. By reading our guides or using another prep method, you can learn the various grammar rules that are important for being able to answer most of the questions on ACT English.

With diction questions, the ACT is looking to see which students can also spot errors where you can’t apply your grammar rules. The only way you will know these answers is to understand the subtle differences between similar words.

If you don’t think this task sounds too difficult, keep in mind that many students make diction errors all the time in their everyday speech and writing. The makers of the ACT know which words are most confusing for students, and focus on these when writing the test.

So let’s start there – with the most commonly confused words that the ACT loves to test.

The Most Common Diction Errors

Some of the diction errors the ACT tests are random and therefore essentially impossible to study for.

However, the ACT writers have a couple of favorite errors, which usually appear at least once on every test. We'll go through these one at a time.

THAN vs. THEN

The first key concept for diction questions is understanding the difference between “than” and “then.”

Than is used to show a comparison.

Then is used for showing what happens next.

Pop Quiz!

Look at the following pair of sentences. Can you tell which one is correct?

Answer: the second is correct because the sentence shows a comparison - than is needed.

How Should You Approach These Questions?

Then/than errors are pretty easy to spot and correct.

When you see one of these words underlined, look at the rest of the sentence. If it is comparing something, use “than." If it is telling that one thing happened after another, use “then.”

Let’s look back at the first question

At the beginning of the article, I gave you the following question:

Now you can understand why the answer is (B) better than. The sentence shows a comparison (waking up and smelling coffee vs. waking up and doing anything else), so we need than.

HAVE vs. OF

The second most important diction pair to know is “have” and “of."

The important distinction here is that “have” is a helping verb, while “of” is a preposition. If you see “of” being used as a helping verb, it will be incorrect!

The #1 Rule for Have/Of: 

If you see could of, would/will of, should of, or might of: these are all INCORRECT. 

Instead they should be could HAVE, would/will HAVE, should HAVE, and might HAVE.

This is one of those “everyday English” mistakes. In speaking, people tend to pronounce “have” like “of” because it’s faster and easier to say. It also sounds a lot like our contractions “would’ve," “should’ve," etc.

This has led some people to believe that “of” is actually the correct word to use in these circumstances - but it’s not!

Let’s look at some examples:

"Would of" is always incorrect; "would have" is the correct replacement.

How Should You Approach These Questions?

Have/of questions should also be very easy to spot if you're looking for them. If you see of or have underlined, be ready to see a diction question.

Remember that if you have would/will of, might of, should of, or could of, you can immediately cross out those answers.

Choose an answer that replaces “of” with “have” and is also grammatically correct in the sentence.

Let’s look at an example from the ACT.

First thing we see in the answer choices are two answers that can automatically be crossed out, which makes our lives so much easier! Get rid of C and D, which both have the dreaded “of” construction.

Now it’s a matter of differentiating between “reveals” and “reveal." At this point, you may notice that we are looking at a subject-verb agreement question. So we need to find what the subject is.

Ask yourself: what is doing the revealing? It’s the “last twenty years of letters." When we cross out modifiers and the prepositional phrase, we get “last twenty years of letters." Now it’s obvious that “years” is the subject.

Since “years” is a plural noun, we need the plural verb, which is “reveal." B is the answer.

Other Easily Confused Words

The ACT will rarely test other commonly-confused words. These questions are very difficult to predict because they happen quite infrequently.

I have included a list of commonly confused words at the end of this article. Try reading through them and see if there are any that surprise you or that you didn’t know.

If so, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure you have these down before you take the test.

But don’t bother spending a lot of time worrying about this list. The ACT will rarely test this kind of question, so it’s really not worth stressing out over. 

You will most often see these commonly confused words in the context of our next type of question, which is….

Understanding Word Meaning in Context 

Instead of using really tricky commonly confused words, the ACT usually uses fairly common words with similar meanings, and asks you to choose which one is best for the sentence.

This can be tricky because you have to really think about what the differences are between the different words that you're given, and also understand what the sentence needs in order to most correctly complete it.

This example shows how the ACT uses relatively simple words to try to trick you. You are probably familiar with all of the words in the answer choices, so let’s look at them closely to see which one best fits the sentence.

All of the words here imply some sort of contrast or conflict, but in very different ways.

Let’s start with the given word, “contest." A contest implies some form of formal competition between two things. Though the author says that there are differences between American and Korean age counting traditions, he doesn’t imply that they were actually in competition with each other. So (A) is out.

Let’s look at (B). “Change” implies that something was one way, and then became another way. This doesn’t work because these traditions haven’t changed from one to the other - they were just different to begin with. So (B) is out.

(C) is quite similar to (A), in that “dispute," like “contest," shows a direct conflict between two things. Again, this doesn’t really work because the two traditions aren’t actually competing with each other.

That leaves us with (D), which is the only answer that makes sense. As we’ve said, the two traditions aren’t having a fight; they contrast simply because they have different characteristics. That means that (D), “differences," is the most appropriate answer.

How Should You Approach These Questions?

The meaning in context questions are definitely the trickiest of the diction questions. To spot them, look for questions that have an underlined word and answer choices that are completely different words, but are loosely related in meaning.

First, read through the sentence. Try to place a word of your own in the spot of the underlined word.

Now look at the answer choices. Though they will be slightly similar words, they will have different meanings. Which of them can have the meaning most like the word you put into the sentence? Choose that as the answer.

Let’s look at this example from the ACT and use the above strategy to answer it.

First, let’s read through the sentence and try to see what should go in the blank. “Perhaps the celebration of New Year’s Day in Korean culture is _______ because it is thought of as everyone’s birthday party.”

Something along the lines of “made more important” makes sense here. So which word could mean that?

You’ll notice that almost all the words imply going up in one way or another - this is how the ACT is trying to trick you. But in the right context, one of them can also mean showing greater importance.

“Raised” and “lifted” both refer to physically moving something up (unless they are paired with other words - not the case here). So (B) and (C) are out.

“Lighted” is thrown in here to trick you and is quite different to the others - its means something has been made lighter, as in the opposite of darker. It doesn’t work at all, so (D) is out.

Therefore the best word is the one the sentence started out with. If you look up “heighten”, you will see it can mean to physically raise something up, but it can also mean to make something more intense or significant, which is close to the original idea we came up with, which was making something more important.

Looking Back

The second question I gave you about smelling coffee in the morning had one of these meaning in context errors. Take a second look at the question.

Though the answer choices are all vaguely related – they all imply something that excites or surprises in some way – the correct answer is “stimulating”. This is the only word that really implies something that helps wake you up, which is what is needed to correctly complete the sentence.

Quick Recap

To summarize, here are the key strategies you need to use to master diction questions on ACT English: 

1. “Of” used as a helping verb (would of, should of) is always incorrect. Choose an answer that replaces it with “have."
2. Use “than” for sentences with comparisons.
3. Use “then” to show one thing happening after another.
4. When you see a meaning in context question, first read through the sentence and mentally replace the word with one that makes sense in the sentence. Choose the answer that comes closest to the word you used.

Now It’s Your Turn!

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

List of Commonly Confused Words

What’s Next?

Now that you know how to tackle one of the trickier subjects on the ACT English, try another: here is how to take on idioms on the ACT.

Not sure what else you’ll be up against? Here is a full breakdown of what you will find on ACT English.

Aiming high? Here are some top tips to get a 36 on ACT English.