ShmoopTube

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the flip-flop.

00:07

Good for beachgoers, bad for politicians.

00:13

How would you correct the underlined portion below, if at all?

00:16

My brother always tries to scare me at Halloween by jumping out of the bushes.

00:21

Without a shadow of a doubt, this year would be no different.

00:25

Here are the potential answers...

00:31

Here, the first-person point of view and informal language give this passage a casual tone.

00:36

The subject matter also makes the whole thing seem relaxed; it's hard to sound super-formal

00:40

if we're talking about our brother jumping out of bushes to scare us at Halloween.

00:44

My, word!

00:45

Anyway, it's like the sentences are wearing shorts and flip-flops, and we've got to

00:49

find an answer that's equally as casual.

00:52

Both (B) and (C) are definitely not wearing flip-flops.

00:54

The words "indubitably" and "incontestable" are about as formal as it gets.

00:59

Plunking either of these answer choices into the underlined portion would be like

01:03

wearing wingtips on the beach.

01:07

The original sentence uses the phrase, without a shadow of a doubt,

01:10

which is a fairly well known idiom.

01:12

Of course, while it's not totally formal, it's not the sort of thing that people

01:17

would say in everyday speech, at least not in the modern era.

01:21

It's sort of like somebody going to the beach wearing, one flip-flop and one wingtip.

01:25

We're going for the full flip-flop style, here, so we can nix choice (A).

01:29

Choice (D) is the right answer because "naturally" is the most casual of the answer choices.

01:35

We're actually thinking about trying this one flip-flop, one wingtip style.

01:39

We hear it's the hottest new hipster fad.

Full Transcript