What is an appositive and how to use it
An appositive is a noun or a noun phrase that sits next to another noun to rename it or to describe it in another way. The word appositive comes from the Latin for to put near. Appositives are usually offset with commas, parentheses round brackets, or dashes. Often an appositive will just provide bonus information that could be removed without destroying the meaning. Sometimes, however, removing an appositive will leave you with a question. When an appositive is essential for understanding, it is called a restrictive appositive. When it's just removable bonus information, it's called a non-restrictive appositive. Non-restrictive appositives are always offset with commas, dashes or brackets. Restrictive appositives are usually offset with commas, dashes, or parentheses round brackets but not always.
The word appositive comes from the Latin phrases ad and position meaning near and placement. An appositive will nearly always be to the immediate right of the noun it is renaming or describing in another way. However, they do occasionally appear farther away.As a native speaker, you'll naturally be good at creating restrictive appositives i.e., ones essential for meaning, but non-restrictive ones i.e., ones that just add bonus information are likely to come less naturally because it's a more deliberate act to insert them. If that's true for you, it's something worth overcoming because appositives are useful for providing interesting detail mid-sentence in a way that doesn't wreck your sentence structure, and they can be good for emphasis.
Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side, with one element serving to identify the other in a different way; the two elements are said to be in apposition. One of the elements is called the appositive, although its identification requires consideration of how the elements are used in a sentence. For example, in the two sentences below, the phrases Alice Smith and my sister are in apposition, with the appositive identified with italics, My sister, Alice Smith, likes jelly beans. Alice Smith, my sister, likes jelly beans.
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