When you infer, you utilize details in a text to reach a conclusion about something the author does not explicitly mention. For example, if I were reading a book report on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I would want to know whether my reader thought the story was happy or sad. I could infer this by looking at some of the details in the text; for example, I would know that Bob Cratchit's family did not get any money from Santa Claus because he was poor. I could then conclude that the story is probably sad.