Some sentences stop you even though you know every word.
An editorial whose argument you cannot quite pin down. A line of Shakespeare. A paragraph in a paper outside your field. Select it, and ContextReader tells you what the writer is actually saying.
If the recent acrimony over devolution is any indication, the Centre would do well to disabuse itself of the notion that federal comity is a favour it bestows upon the States rather than an obligation the Constitution imposes.
A newspaper editorial, selected mid-sentence.
A sonnet and a transformer paper need different things said about them.
- Plain meaning
- The same thing said in ordinary English.
- What's the point?
- The writer's position, what they are arguing against, and their tone — including irony, which is easy to read straight.
- Line by line
- Verse worked through one line at a time, each line quoted as it stands.
- How it works
- Word choice, sound, where the line breaks, and words doing two jobs at once.
- The jargon
- Technical terms defined in the sense this particular text is using them.
It reads the paragraph, not just the words you picked.
You cannot say what a line of verse means from the line alone, and you cannot explain what an editorial argues against without the sentences that set it up. So the passage arrives with its surroundings, and the part you chose marked inside them.
The decision to defer the census has been defended on administrative grounds. «But the argument wears thin in its fourth year.» Every month of delay compounds an already serious deficit.