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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by

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strong winds. Not the kind brought on by beans.

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How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

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Strong winds are powerful enough to lift animals, people, trees, and houses, however, such as

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those in a tornado or hurricane.

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This question requires us to know a dangling modifier when we see one. Lucky for us, they're easy to spot.

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Whenever we find a modifying word or phrase that's a long way from the thing it's

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trying to describe, we know we have a dangling modifier on our hands.

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The underlined portion has a good example of this grammatical no-no.

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The phrase "such as those in a tornado or hurricane" is trying to describe "strong

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winds." But it's having a tough time doing so because there's a lot of sentence in between.

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Remember: to avoid confusion, it's best to place the modifier directly before or after

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the thing it's describing. Since our underlined portion fails to do this, we can eliminate choice (A).

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Choices (C) and (D) both avoid this mistake. In each option, "strong winds" is immediately

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followed by "such as those in a tornado or hurricane."

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The trouble is that both choices misplace the word "however," which should be at

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the beginning of the sentence because it addresses a contrast with the previous sentence. Thus,

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we can cross out both (C) and (D).

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Choice (B) is the best answer because it correctly places "however" at the beginning of the

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sentence and is blissfully free of dangling modifiers.

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A tornado, followed by a bunch of frogs bashing into people's heads seems like a cruel one-two

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punch from Mother Nature.

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