Appositives are identifying words or phrases that follow a noun, providing additional information. They consist of nouns and noun phrases, and are usually separated by commas in English. Appositives can come before or after the identified noun, but are typically placed after. Commas are necessary if the descriptive phrase is unnecessary, but not if it provides necessary information.
An appositive is an identifying word or phrase that follows a noun. These sentences provide the listener or reader with additional information about the preceding noun that the noun itself does not provide. Appositives exist in most languages, as every modern language has nouns, but the way the appositives fit in a sentence can vary by language. In English, some appositives need to be separated by commas, while others need no additional punctuation.
Although they modify nouns, appositives actually consist of nouns and noun phrases. These words and phrases are usually not essential since the sentence can usually stand on its own without them. The purpose of an appositive is simply to provide the reader or listener with more extensive information. For example, in the sentence “My sister’s best friend, Mary, went to the doctor,” the apretive is “Mary,” and “best friend” is the noun phrase from “Mary.” The sentence makes perfect sense even without the inclusion of an appositive, but the addition of the first name “Maria” gives the reader more information about the identity of the subject in question.
Within the English language, most appositives come after the nouns they identify. However, the same adposition can usually be placed before the identified term. While this practice is still grammatically correct, native English speakers rarely place adjuncts before the identified noun in casual conversation.
In the sentence, “George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, was sworn in on April 30, 1789,” “George Washington” is the subject noun and “the first president of the United States of America” is the prepositional phrase . An individual might also write, “The first president of the United States of America, George Washington, was sworn in on April 30, 1789.” The subject noun and the appositive remain the same in both cases, and both sentences are technically grammatically correct. Most speakers would use the first phrasing, however, rather than the second.
Appositives are almost always separated from the rest of the sentence by commas, but some appositives do not require additional punctuation. If the descriptive sentence provides unnecessary information, the writer must separate the sentence from the rest of the sentence using commas. However, if the descriptive phrase provides the necessary information, commas are not needed.
For example, in the sentence “Billy played baseball with his friend Robert”, “friend” is the identified noun and “Robert” is the positive. Assuming Billy has more than one friend, the writer must identify the friend in question to let the reader know which friend Billy has been playing with. Consequently, no comma is needed. If the sentence reads “Billy played baseball with his best friend, Robert,” the friend’s name is no longer vital information due to the fact that Billy only has one best friend. Thus, the reader already knows who the writer is referring to, even without the name, and the identifying noun must be offset with a comma.
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