An inference question asks what you can conclude from the clues before a blank. Read the words before the blank to see what the ending needs, then find the view the text tests. Put the findings and any reason they matter into a few words, and ask how they fit together. Predict only what the clues support, so you don't add more than they show. Wrong choices often go past the text by turning a finding into an unsupported claim.
Hints
- Hint 1
Start with the common view Velez challenges. Ask what it says the margin notes were mainly for.
- Hint 2
Look at the kinds of comments that made up most of the sample. What is the example phrase responding to?
- Hint 3
Connect the comments with the way the library’s books circulated. What did that circulation allow a later reader to do?
Step-by-step
Join the clues without adding more
Step 1Find the pattern in the comments
The text challenges the view that margin notes were mainly private reactions, so the blank needs a conclusion about what Velez found instead. What did most comments do? Fewer than a quarter judged characters; most corrected facts, connected books, or responded to earlier notes. The replies give us a reason to ask how one reader encountered another’s comments.
- Step 2
Connect the notes to shared books
The books circulated among many subscribers, so a note didn't have to stay with the person who wrote it. How could this change a later subscriber’s reading? That reader could encounter a correction, a link to another book, or a reply, and then add a response. The reader would then be answering someone’s comment about the novel as well as reading the novel itself. Let's stay within the clues: the shared book gave separate readers a way to discuss what they read.
- Step 3
Keep the conclusion within the evidence
How far can we take that prediction? The claim about factual errors says what readers valued most, which Velez’s counts don't show. Librarians required subscribers adds a rule the text never mentions, while usually knew the identities adds knowledge the comments don't show. The text says later readers could encounter and answer comments left by earlier ones, so could transform individual reading describes a possible exchange, not something every reader did. Choice D.