Sedgehead's Standard Note Number 4a

APPOSITIVES

Appositives are strange little things many non-native and native speakers of English never master (hence this note).  What is an appositive?  Who cares?  What I want to know is how to write good English, not a bunch of grammatical terms!

An appositive is a word or phrase that repeats the noun or pronoun that is provided before the appositive in the sentence.

Here's some examples of nouns and appositives.  Then I will use them in sentences to show you how they work.

NOUN or PRONOUN (including phrases) -- APPOSITIVE (including phrases)

black dog -- the dog that bit me

woman -- the one in the red dress

singing frog -- the frog on the rock

iceberg -- the one that would sink the Titanic

As you can, they are repetitive (they repeat the original noun or pronoun). Here's how to use those appositives.

The black dog, the dog that bit me, has still not been captured.

That woman, the one in the red dress, is my beautiful wife.

The singing frog, the frog on the rock, is calling for a mate.

That iceberg, the one that would sink the Titanic, was probably calved off the coast of Greenland.

What you need to know is that appositives are "set off" by commas. Use a comma before and after an appositive in a sentence. Then you will be positively right!