Appositives
Grammar Rules Guide - Chapter 5
Appositives are two words or word groups which mean the same thing and are placed together. Appositives identify or explain the nouns or pronouns which they modify:
Our leader, President Figbottom, is a political genius.
We can say that President Figbottom is an appositive or is in apposition to our leader. President Figbottom identifies or explains leader.
An appositive phrase includes an appositive and its modifiers:
The most famous jazz club, Bobby Z's, is located on Bourbon Street, a busy New Orleans thoroughfare.
Restrictive Appositives and Nonrestrictive Appositives
A restrictive appositive is necessary to maintain the meaning of the sentence and does not require commas. Usually, a restrictive appositive is a single word closely related to the preceding word. It restricts or narrows the meaning of the word it modifies:
Guitarist Carlos Santana is scheduled to appear at the Hollywood Bowl. (Carlos Santana restricts the general term guitarist.)
My dog Trixie had three puppies.
A nonrestrictive appositive may be omitted without changing the basic meaning of the sentence. A nonrestrictive appositive is separated by commas. Commas are always used when the word which the appositive modifies is a proper noun:
Carlos Santana, the guitarist, is scheduled to appear at the Hollywood Bowl. (Guitarist offers additional information about the specific name Carlos Santana.)
There are many names for Liberati Nevus, a festival commemorating freedom from British rule, in Durban, a city in Nigeria.
Additional note
A dash or colon, as well as a comma, can be used to set off appositives: There was only one thing on the athlete's mind—winning.
Grammar Rules Guide Index
Active and Passive Voice - Chapter 1
Adjective, Adverb, and Noun Clauses - Chapter 2
Adjectives - Chapter 3
Adverbs - Chapter 4
Appositives - Chapter 5
Auxiliary Verbs - Chapter 6
Common and Proper Nouns - Chapter 7
Comparatives and Superlatives - Chapter 8
Complements - Chapter 9
Conjunctions - Chapter 10
Conjunctive Adverbs - Chapter 11
Dangling Modifiers - Chapter 12
Direct and Indirect Objects - Chapter 13
Fused Sentences, Run-Ons, and Comma Splices - Chapter 14
Homophones - Chapter 15
Independent and Dependent Clauses - Chapter 16
Interjections - Chapter 17
Mass and Count Nouns - Chapter 18
Misplaced Modifiers - Chapter 19
Noun and Pronoun Case - Chapter 20
Noun and Verb Phrases - Chapter 21
Nouns - Chapter 22
Parallelism - Chapter 23
Perfect and Progressive Verb Forms - Chapter 24
Prepositional Phrases - Chapter 25
Prepositions - Chapter 26
Principal Parts of Verbs - Chapter 27
Pronoun and Antecedent Agreement - Chapter 28
Pronouns - Chapter 29
Regular and Irregular Verbs - Chapter 30
Relative Clauses - Chapter 31
Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Clauses - Chapter 32
Sentence Fragments - Chapter 33
Sentence Types - Chapter 34
Subjects and Predicates - Chapter 35
Verb Mood - Chapter 36
Verbals and Verbal Phrases - Chapter 37
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