I’m Such an Optimist, I’m Appositive (Part I)

What is an appositive?


An appositive is used in writing to give more information about a person, place or thing.  (People use appositives in conversation, too, but it’s really not that important.)  Appositives look like they break two cardinal rules of writing: Everything must be connected and If you have two nouns together, you must have one connecting word, either a preposition or a conjunction.  (These are appositives, by the way.)  Here are the signs of an appositive.

1. When you see two nouns, back to back, without a connecting word, you probably have an appositive.
2. An appositive is usually separated from the original noun by a comma.  (I will explain more about this later.)
3. The two nouns are the same person, place or thing.  Sometimes they are even the same word.

Here are some examples of sentences with appositives.

• My older son, Kai, is sixteen years old and my younger son, Skyler, is 18 months old.
• The most popular pieces of technology, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, are all made by Apple.
• Last summer, I toured the Gettysburg Battlefield, the site of perhaps the most important event in U.S. history.

The purpose of the appositive is to identify the noun, to give more information.*  What are your son’s names?  What are the most popular pieces of technology?  What is the significance of the Battle of Gettysburg?  Most commonly, appositives give the name or title of a person.  (older son = Kai; younger son = Skyler)  Appositives are also used to connect lists of examples (popular technology = iPod, iPhone, iPad).  Obviously it is possible two have two or more nouns in apposition.  Appositives are also very useful for giving detailed descriptions of a noun (Battle of Gettysburg = the site of...), when a couple of adjectives is not enough.  I have seen several examples of the same word repeated three times, and each one is followed by an adjective clause, all of which describe the original noun, like this.

• One of my personal heros is Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who changed the course of American history, a man who believed that violence and hatred were never acceptable, a man who was willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the country.

If you think appositives are very similar to adjectives clauses, you are absolutely right because an appositive is basically a reduced adjective clause.**  Appositives originally come from simple SVC adjective clauses.  For example:

• my oldest son, Kai   /   my oldest son, whose name is Kai
• pieces of technology, the iPod...   /   pieces of technology, which are the iPod...
• Gettysburg Battlefield, the site...   /   Gettysburg Battlefield, which was the site...

Easy peasey, lemon squeezy.  However, don’t be fooled.  Just because two nouns are separated by a comma, that doesn’t mean there is an appositive.  For example:

• After rugby practice, Kai went back to his room and took a long, hot shower.

Practice and Kai are together, and they are separated by a comma, but this is not an appositive.  First, there is a connecting word.  Practice is the object of the preposition after.  (Here's an appositive without commas.)  You could move this whole phrase to the end of the sentence and nothing would really change.  Second, the two nouns don’t have the same meaning.  Kai is a person (as much as any teenager is a person) while practice is a thing.  For these reasons, this is not an appositive.


Also, it is easy to get fooled by a compound subject or object that has three or more nouns.  For example:

• We made a picnic lunch, sandwiches and a bento, and went for a hike.
• I put my lunch, a bottle of water, and some bug spray in my backpack.

The first example has an appositive, because sandwiches and a bento describe the picnic lunch.  They are the same.  However, the second sentence does not have an appositive, even though lunch and a bottle of water are separated by a comma.  In this case, I have listed the three things I put in my backpack.  My lunch and a bottle of water are two of them.  Besides, a bottle of water is not a very good lunch.


Do you always need commas with an appositive?


My 90% answer*** is, YES.  If you write an appositive, put commas both before and after the second noun (and whatever might be attached to the second noun, like an adjective clause).  Because an appositive comes from a reduced adjective clause, they follow the rules regarding defining and non-defining adjective clauses.  (Click on the link to see a more detailed explanation.)


In a nutshell, you need commas when you add a non-defining clause to a noun.  A non-defining clause is an adjective clause that gives extra, bonus information the reader may or may not already know or want to know.  It’s kind of like the director’s commentary on a DVD.  You are adding it just in case someone might think it’s interesting.  Since appositives are adding definitions, extra descriptive information, lists and examples, most of the time, this is bonus material.


Of the approximately ninety sentences I pulled out of books, and probably many more I didn’t because they seemed very simple and obvious, only five didn’t have commas.  This is closer to a 95% rule.  It’s certainly not enough to lose sleep over.  Besides, once you become comfortable with punctuating adjective clauses in general, that will carry over to appositives.


These are the basics of appositives and I recommend that intermediate learners of English try to use simple appositives when they write.  However, learning to identify appositives is much trickier and much more important for reading comprehension.  If you would like to know more, keep reading Part II.

Go to Part II

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*In this sentence, two infinitive phrases are in apposition: to identify... and to give....


**A reduced clause is a clause from which several understood words are eliminated because they are unnecessary.  For example:

• Before we move to California, we need to sell a lot of stuff. / Before moving to California...  (We is the subject of both clauses, so it can be eliminated in the dependent clause.)
• You will do fine on your exam if you are well-prepared. / You will do fine if well-prepared.  (This is a formal, literary structure, but again, the subject is the same in both clauses.  Also, the “be” verb can very often be dropped in reduced clauses.)
• The car that is parked in my spot... / The car parked in my spot.

***A 90% answer is what I call an overly simplified rule that a language learner can use to make decisions.  It means that this rule works about 90% of the time, but if you always follow it, you will be wrong 10% of the time, which is still an A-.  In other words, for now, if you follow this simplified rule all the time, it’s good enough.  However, you will need to amend, or add to, this rule as your English becomes more advanced.