Making an Appositive

Experience!

What do you notice?

Catherine the Great, my Russian grandma, is already awake.

-- Cari Best, Three Cheers for Catherine the Great! (2003)

Why use appositives?

Sometimes when we write, we want to add new information without creating a new sentence.

For example…

Clementine is funny.

She is in third grade.

She lives in New York.

Clementine, a funny third grader, lives in

New York.

Let’s ask ourselves, what is being renamed??

Avon, a rather small snail, read a book every day.

So what is an appositive??

• noun or pronoun -- often with modifiers -- set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it

Keith, the boy in rumpled shorts and shirt, did not know he was being watched as he entered room 215 of the Mountain View Inn.

Placement of appositives

• An appositive phrase usually follows the word it explains or identifies, but it may also precede it.

When do we use punctuation?

• Remember non-essential clauses/phrases?– Commas

Let’s see…

• When there is an essential information contained in the appositive, then you don’t need commas.

Let’s Practice!

• The insect, a large cockroach, is crawling across the kitchen table.

• During the dinner conversation, Clifford, the messiest eater at the table, spewed mashed potatoes like an erupting volcano.

• Reliable, Diane's eleven-year-old beagle, chews holes in the living room carpeting as if he were still a puppy.

Did you get them right?

• The insect, a large cockroach, is crawling across the kitchen table.

• During the dinner conversation, Clifford, the messiest eater at the table, spewed mashed potatoes like an erupting volcano.

• Reliable, Diane's eleven-year-old beagle, chews holes in the living room carpeting as if he were still a puppy.