- Russia is the most powerful country after the US.
Or
- Russia is the second most powerful country after the US.
Question: Which one of the above should I use to convey that Russia is second to US in terms of overall power.
Personally, I was inclined to believe that number one is the correct version, because to me it is more logically sound to think of 'after' as 'excluding' or 'following'. However I found more instances of number 2 being used on online forums.
Many thanks in advance.
Best Answer
Both sentences are correct, though I would favour the latter.
The first one requires a little more thought by the listener because, when parsing the sentence on-the-fly, the after the US clause changes Russia's position from first to second.
For the second sentence, the first part stands on its own:
and the after the US clause simply provides additional information (who is #1): it's an afterthought, and you could insert a comma to separate it from the main sentence.