Chinese grammar: Comparing 以后yihou and 之后zhihou

This article is a stub. Editors can help the Chinese Grammar Wiki by expanding it. If you are trying to explain what you did after a certain event, you might want to use "以后" (yǐhòu) or "之后" (zhīhòu). After all, they do both mean "after", right? Well, it turns out that there are a few rules that you need to be aware of before you use them.

Both indicates another event happened after a special time

In this case, these two words share a structure, so it is easy to see how they would be easily confused. Here's the structure:

In situations where you have already done something and then after that you did something else, you can use "以后". The stipulation with this is that the time has to be explicitly said. That is, there has to be a time for "以后" to modify. Otherwise the sentence won't make sense.

Examples
Xià yǔ yǐ hòu / zhī hòu kōnɡ qì huì hǎo hěn duō.
下雨 以后/之后 空气 会 好 很 多。

以后 means "in the future" all by itself

Now you might be thinking, "But '以后' means afterwards, why doesn't that work?" In this case, "以后" is just used to talk about the future in general. The meaning that you're probably thinking of comes from the first structure above.

Examples
Yǐ hòu de shì qínɡ yǐ hòu zài shuō bɑ。
以后 的 事情 以后 再 说 吧。

之后 indicates another event happened after one all by itself

Compared to "以后", "之后" is a little more free. Not only can it happen in the same place, modifying the time, but it can also appear just on its own, meaning something along the lines of "then". While "以后" is dependent on the time, "之后" can stand by itself.

There is another structure that only works with "之后":

Examples