Learn English – Should I add a comma before “since”

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Background: In psychology, there are two classification methods of emotion (discrete classification and continuous classification), since emotion are universal of human being. But in the study of attitude, we could not classfy attitudes in the way of classifying emotion, since different countries owns its unique attitude categories.

Now here are the questions:

  1. Should I insert a comma before "since" in the sentence below?

  2. Should I use the term "emotion" or "emotions"?

  3. Is there anything not idiomatic in the sentence below?

This is the example sentence:

However, it is hard to use the classification methods of the researches for emotions to study attitudes since attitudes relate closely to cultures, which may differ a lot across cultures.

Best Answer

I don't think we need a comma before since. When since is used as a conjunction to mean "because" at the beginning of a sentence, we use a comma at the end of this dependent clause. However, it's not necessary to put a comma before since when this dependent clause starts after the main clause.

We are not referring to a particular emotion. Instead, we are referring to all type of emotions. So we must use "emotions".

I don't think there is anything unnatutal or non idiomatic in the sentence in question.

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