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Reader question: Please explain “after the fact” in this sentence: There were many problem signs, as a matter of fact, but they ignored them when they were in love only to see so clearly after the fact. My comments: After the breakup. “The fact” in “after the fact” refers to this fact. Fact, you see, refer to a piece of information or situation that is true. Here, as a matter of fact, the fact that the couple broke up goes unmentioned, but it is a fact we can safely infer from the flow of the text. To paraphrase the above sentence again: There were signs they had problems, signs that they were not right for one another. But when they were in love, they ignored the problems. Now that their love for one another is diminished, they began to see. In other words, they’d come to their senses too late. They “ignored them” or perhaps they didn’t see anything at all. When people are in love they tend to be “too much in love”, as Sarah Vaughan used to sing. They get misty, “never knowing my right foot from my left, my hat from my glove”, and all that jazz. It’s a good feeling to have, of course, but it is pretty crazy too. Anyways, “after the fact” is a colloquialism derived from the legal Latin term Ex Post Fact, literally “from after the fact”. The legal term usually refers to some laws that are adopted after certain significant events but are effective regarding those events. In other words, they’re retroactive. | 
