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.
info that renames the car
• My brother’s car, a Gremlin, is the
envy of my friends.
WHAT’S AN APPOSITIVE PHRASE?
Definition: a noun phrase—a group of
words—that identifies the noun or
pronoun near or next to it.
info that renames the car
• My brother’s car, a tricked-out,
lime-green Gremlin, is the envy of
my friends.
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) 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?
1) 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?
2) 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?
2) 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
SUBJECT
house
(dump)
PREDICATE
burned
His house, a rambling dump, burned down.
The appositive phrase renames the noun house. Notice – the
appositive phrase contains a noun - dump