Appositives

Lesson 3 Appositives

 Essential Question

 

How can we offer quick and necessary information in a sentence?


Grammar in the World

 

appositives@3.png

 

What Do I Know?

Use the interactive exercise below to see what you already know about appositives:

 

Building Blocks

Learn About Appositives

When speaking and writing, we often want to give a bit of information to our audience so that they know exactly what we are talking about. Sometimes, we use full phrases and clauses to add this information. Other times, we need only a short piece of information to help.

Appositives are nouns and pronouns (or noun/pronoun phrases) that give more information about another noun or pronoun in a sentence. They explain these nouns/pronouns, or they give more information about them. 

Look at these examples of appositives in bold, and then read on to see how they work in sentences.

  • Mary Shelley, an English novelist, wrote the gothic novel Frankenstein. 
  • The writer Mary Shelley was only 20 years old when Frankenstein was published. 
  • She came up with the idea in a ghost-story writing competition with three friends, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori.
  • During the Romantic period of British literature, the late 1700s and early 1800s, it was unusual for a female writer to be so successful. 
  • Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is one of the first examples of a novel in the science fiction genre.
  • The mother of science fiction, Mary Shelley has also been called the Queen of Horror and the Queen of Goth.
  • In real life, Mary Shelley is rumored to carry the heart of Percy Shelley, her deceased husband, in a box with her at all times. 

As you look at these examples of appositives in sentences, what two patterns do you notice? 

  1. Appositives can be located at any place in a sentence–beginning, middle, and end.
  2. Some appositives are set off with commas, and others are not. There is a reason for that, which we will cover in a moment. 

Remember, appositives are nouns or noun phrases (or pronoun/pronoun phrases) that give us a little more information about a topic. For example, look at these sentences from above.



Sentence

Noun or
Noun Phrase

Appositive or Appositive Phrase

Purpose

Mary Shelley, an English novelist, wrote the gothic novel Frankenstein. 

Mary Shelley

an English novelist

To tell us more about who Mary Shelley is.

Mary Shelley, an English novelist, wrote the gothic novel Frankenstein.

the gothic novel

Frankenstein

To clarify which gothic novel we mean.

During the Romantic period of British literature, the late 1700s and early 1800s, it was unusual for a female writer to be so successful. 

the Romantic period of British literature

the late 1700s and early 1800s

to specify when the Romantic period was

The mother of science fiction, Mary Shelley has also been called the Queen of Horror and the Queen of Goth.

Mary Shelley

the mother of science fiction

to share a detail about Mary Shelley

 

Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Appositives

As you noticed, some appositives are set off by commas, and others are not. To determine when to use commas, first determine whether the information that the appositive provides is essential to the sentence. 

 

Restrictive Appositives–Essential Information: if the appositive is necessary to understand the meaning of a sentence, do not put commas around it. Letting it rest in the sentence without being set off by commas shows that it is essential.

  • Writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft died when her daughter Mary Shelley was only 10 days old.  
    • We need to know each name to determine which writer/feminist and daughter is meant. 
  • Mary Shelly published the poem “Mounseer Nongtongpaw” when she was ten years old.
    • When we use the noun phrase the poem, we need to specify the exact poem we mean. 

 

Nonrestrictive Appositives–Helpful Information. If the appositive gives information that is helpful to know but not essential to the sentence’s meaning, put commas around it. 

  • Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died when Mary Shelley was only 10 days old. 
    • The name is helpful but not essential in this sentence.
  • Mary Shelley published her first poem, “Mounseer Nongtongpaw,” when she was ten years old.
    • The noun phrase “her first poem” gives us the information we need in this sentence; the title of the poem is important but not essential.
  • Mary Shelley’s father refused to speak to her after she had an affair with his married student, Percy Bysse Shelly. 
    • The name gives us more information but is not essential. 

 

In general, if the sentence is clear and makes sense if you lift the appositive out of it, then don’t use commas. If we really need to know the information the appositive gives us in order to understand the sentence, then surround the appositive with commas.

 

Do I Get It?

In the interactive below, read each sentence from https://www.biography.com/writer/mary-shelley Links to an external site. and identify one appositive.