以后, 后来 and之后?

[HedgePig]

I'm confused about the differences in meaning of 以后, 后来 and之后.

They all seem to mean "afterwards" or later.

Are they essentially interchangeable? If not when is it appropriate to use each one?

Regards

HedgePig

[imron]

后来 is only used to talk about something in the past that occurred after some other point in the past.

Also, it cannot be used after a time word e.g. you cannot say 3点后来, whereas 3点以后 is fine.

[yersi]

As far as I remember, 之后 is often used when talking about a relatively short timespan (minutes, hours), while 以后 is usually used for a longer timespan (days, months).

后來 is more like "afterwards", "later" or "after the fact" and is used differently from 以后 and 之后.

You can also take a look at Jukuu, which is a great tool for getting the gist of the difference between synonyms or words with very similar semantic meaning.

[necroflux]

Yersi is spot on. 之後 and 以後 are very similar and mean approximately the same as "after", the difference being the time span involved. 以前 and 之前 are both "before" and in the same way, 以前 is used for events in the more distant past. It's somewhat of a gray area but in my experience anything longer than a week in the past or future can safely take the "以" form.

後來 is just "later". I picked this sentence off of the net:

"開機有畫面，但後來畫面消失" (When I) turn on the computer there's a picture, but later the picture disappears.

[HedgePig]

Thanks for the explanations, everyone - that's clarified things.

The dictionaries I consulted didn't make the distinctions clearly.

Regards

HedgePig