An appositive is a noun or a noun phrase that renames or explains the noun right next to it, as in My dog Sally, a pug, loves treats. When it only adds extra information, it is set off with commas, and you can leave it out without changing the meaning of the sentence.
There are many ways to give your writing more depth, make things clearer, and paint pictures for your readers. Metaphors and similar stylistic devices are well known and often used for these purposes. But how positive are you about using appositives?
What is an appositive?
You have probably used appositives before, and you have certainly seen them in articles, books, and other texts. But did you recognize them?
In grammar, an appositive is a noun or a noun phrase that renames another noun or noun phrase that it stands next to. Here is an example:
- My dog Sally, a pug, is quite sneaky when she wants a treat.
The appositive in this sentence is a pug. It renames, or describes more closely, the phrase my dog Sally. The breed of the dog is not essential to the meaning of the sentence, so the appositive is set off with commas.
What an appositive does
An appositive renames a noun, but for what purpose? In most cases, the information it gives is not needed to understand the sentence, and the sentence would work just as well without it. The appositive simply adds more information about the noun.
- Sally, a pug who loves long romantic walks to the fridge, is very well-behaved.
The appositive here, a pug who loves long romantic walks to the fridge, is not essential information about Sally. You can cut it out of the sentence without changing its meaning:
- Sally is very well-behaved.
An appositive can be a single word, a short phrase, or, as here, a longer phrase with a clause inside it. What matters is that its core is a noun (pug) that renames the noun next to it (Sally). A clause on its own, such as Sally, who loves walks to the fridge, is well-behaved, is a relative clause, not an appositive.
How to recognize an appositive
Commas, dashes, and parentheses
Besides being optional, an appositive is easy to recognize because it is usually enclosed in commas. This is the textbook way to mark an appositive. Some writers prefer a pair of dashes instead, which gives the appositive more emphasis, or parentheses, which make it quieter:
- My best friend (a snoring, treat-hunting pug) sleeps on my feet every night.
The guide to the en dash and the em dash shows how to set a phrase off with dashes.
When there are no commas
Some appositives are essential: without them, the reader would not know which person or thing you mean. These appositives take no commas:
- My dog Sally sleeps all day, but my dog Max never rests.
- The poet Robert Burns was born in Scotland.
In the first sentence, the names tell the reader which of the two dogs is meant, so they cannot be left out. If you have only one dog, write My dog, Sally, sleeps all day, with commas, because the name is then extra information.
Position
Appositives usually interrupt a sentence, and with it the flow of reading. But they can appear in other places, too. At the beginning:
- A world-famous show pug, Bernadette won her third award this season.
And at the end:
- Everyone loves Bernadette, a world-famous show pug.
Commas around appositives are easy to forget, especially the second one. The Spell Checker checks punctuation as well as spelling and grammar, and the post on correct comma usage explains the other places where a comma belongs.