The following sentence was corrected because I didn’t put a punctuation.
Original: Japan was the first country which started the mobile business 1 year earlier than the U.S.
corrected: Japan was the first country which started the mobile business, 1 year earlier than the U.S.
I still don’t understand why I need a punctuation. “1 year earlier than the U.S.” seems just like a temporal adverb.
Please compare these sentences.
Japan started the mobile business 1 year ago.
Japan started the mobile business 1 year earlier than the US.
Japan was the first country which started the mobile business 1 year earlier than the U.S.
These three sentences seem all correct to me.
Which sentence do you need put a punctuation before “1 year”?
And could you explain why you need a punctuation?
I’m not a native English speaker, but I would probably have used a comma before “1 year earlier than the U.S.”. Or put it within parentheses. It is OK to rewrite the sentence in many ways, and while example 1 and 2 are perfect in my opinion, number 3 sounds like there were other countries that also started their mobile busniess 1 year earlier than the U.S.
It’s all about context and word order.
When you put “1 year earlier than the U.S.” at the end of the sentence (the original one) - it looks/sounds/feels better to add a comma (to somewhat reinforce the idea of “extra” information). Otherwise it is too “long”. In my non-native opinion.
As Jeff said, you original sentence sounds like Japan was the first among any number of other countries that started the mobile phone business one year before the U.S.
This is because the temporal adverb without comma:
" 1 year earlier than the U.S."
is modifying only the subordinate clause:
“…which started the mobile business” .
But I think you intend it to modify the main clause:
“Japan was the first country which started the mobile business”
In order to make that clear you have to add the comma, or you can move the adverbial to the beginning:
"One year earlier than the U.S., Japan was the first country which started the mobile business "
Look at this sentence I made up:
"Ichiro was the first Japanese outfielder who played for a Major League baseball team two years before Matsui. " It has the same problem.
Thanks for your messages!
These are both helpful! I understand the differences.
In order to modify a main clause, I have to add a comma.
I will try to use comma properly in next essay!