APPOSITIVES and APPOSITIVE PHRASES

WHAT IS AN APPOSITIVE?Appositive comes from the Latin word meaning “placing close by” or “to put near”

• It is a NOUN that is placed close by the noun it renames.

• My brother’s car, a Gremlin, is the envy of my friends.

info that renames the car

WHAT’S AN APPOSITIVE PHRASE?Definition: a noun phrase—a group of words—that identifies the noun or pronoun near or next to it.

• My brother’s car, a tricked-out, lime-green Gremlin, is the envy of my friends.

info that renames the car

APPOSITIVE PHRASES• Because they always contain nouns, they

often begin with the articles a, an, or the

• The dancer featured in the Six Flags TV ads, an overly-energetic old dude wearing giant glasses, always kind of creeped me out.

Notice the commas offset the APPOSITIVE

APPOSITIVE PHRASES• Because they set up nouns, they often begin

with a, an, or the

• It went away slowly and painfully, the feeling of embarrassment that came after tripping in the cafeteria in front of all the cool kids.

The Appositive Phrase identifies “it”

Appositive phrases can START a sentence

• A heart attack in the making, the colossal burger sat before me, waiting to be devoured.

Appositive phrases can CLOSE a sentence

• The colossal burger sat before me, waiting to be devoured, a heart attack in the making.

Appositive phrases can SPLIT the subject and predicate

• The colossal burger, a heart attack in the making, sat before me, waiting to be devoured.

SUBJECT of sentence

Main VERB/Predicate of sentence

What’s in this for me? Why are appositives useful in my writing?

1) Making our writing more concise

• Rita, who has won many awards for juggling knives, agreed to perform at my birthday party.

• Rita, an award-winning knife juggler, agreed to perform at my birthday party.

This is called an adjective clause. But we can be more concise with an appositive phrase.

What’s in this for me? Why are appositives useful in my writing?

2) Helping a paragraph flow

•Dr. Sam Rebold declares that sugar may be slowly killing us. Rebold is a professor of chemistry and nutritional studies at UCLA. He points out that the average child under twelve consumes 49 pounds of sugar each year.

This interrupts sentence interrupts the flow of information and ideas for the reader

What’s in this for me? Why are appositives useful in my writing?

2) Helping a paragraph flow

•Dr. Sam Rebold, a professor of chemistry and nutritional studies at UCLA, declares that sugar may be slowly killing us. He points out that the average child under twelve consumes 49 pounds of sugar each year.

What’s in this for me? Why are appositives useful in my writing?

3) Defining a term or idea the reader may not know

•After hours of practice, Jane mastered the Nollie.

What’s in this for me? Why are appositives useful in my writing?

3) Defining a term or idea the reader may not know

•After hours of practice, Jane mastered the Nollie, a trick where you use the nose of the skateboard to slap against the ground and pop your board up into the air.

This is one big appositive phrase that renames Nollie

Diagramming an Appositive Phrase

down.burned

His house, a rambling dump, burned down.

house

His

(dump)

a

rambling

SUBJECT PREDICATE

adjective (which one?)

article

adjective (what kind?)

The appositive phrase renames the noun house. Notice – the appositive phrase contains a noun - dump

adverb (to what extent?)

These go under dump because

that’s the word they modify