ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by confused timelines.

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So we’ve been waiting a while for this one. Check out the following passage...

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

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And here are the potential answers...

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Here, we need to find the word that creates the most logical transition between the two sentences.

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In order to do this, we have to have a firm idea of what each sentence is

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trying to get across.

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We’ll take a quick glance back at the passage to get it fixed in our heads.

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OK, so this is easy. The first sentence informs us that a lot of people think Hagiwara created

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fortune cookies, while the second sentence says that a bunch of other people think a

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dude named Jung had the honor.

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Looks like these two sentences are butting heads.

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So we’re on the hunt for a word that helps to establish this contrasting relationship.

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Option (A) suggests the word “anyway,” but this doesn’t get across the meaning we need.

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“Anyway” is usually used when a writer wants to move on to a new topic,

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not when a writer is contrasting two connected ideas.

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Anyway, now it’s time to check out option (C).

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See what we did there?

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Yeah, yeah...we’re not as clever as we’d like to be.

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(C) gives us the word “before.” This doesn’t work either, though. The sentence talks about

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how people “still hold” to a certain idea.

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If the sentence is trying to talk about how people are still doing something, then throwing

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the word “before” in there does nothing but confuse the timeline.

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(D) is incorrect because "although” is what’s known as a subordinating conjunction.

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When this type of conjunction appears before a clause, it makes that clause subordinate to another.

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Subordinate clauses can’t exist on their own and need a main clause to hang on to.

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If we kick off the sentence in question with “although,” it turns the entire thing

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into a subordinate clause with no main clause to hold hands with.

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This prospect makes us sad, so we’ll nix option (D).

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The correct answer is (B).

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It’s totally OK to kick off a sentence with the word “however,”

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and the word signals contrast, making it perfect for what the writer wants to communicate.

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When we see “however” at the top of a sentence, we know that sentence is going to

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disagree with the sentence that came before it.

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When will these sentences learn to get along?

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