English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I just had them doing stretch routines, and after, they got really good at it.
We usually see "after" being preceeded or followed by something. For instance "2 hours after something".
This is the first time I see it being used on its own and it seems to have the meaning "some time later".
Is it correct to use "after" like this without putting any duration before or after it?
"After" implies a sequence in time, space, or an abstract space such as priority, but not necessarily a particular duration of time.
It can be an adverb, a preposition, or a conjunction, but there is an implied sequence. See the definition, with examples:
After all, it has a lot of different uses, but usually the same sense.
"After" can also be used as an adverb not adding a noun after it in a phrase.
For example, "Dan came to work at 10 o'clock. I came one hour after."
or
"He died on June 3rd and was buried the day after."
