What is an appositive?

Do you know what appositives are? They are nouns that rename other nouns, and we use them to give more information about someone or something that we've already named. Let's look more closely at what they are and see how they are diagrammed.

Quick Refresher

Nouns are words that name people, places, things, or ideas, and pronouns are words that take the place of nouns. Nouns and pronouns can do many jobs in our sentences (subjects, direct objects, predicate nouns, appositives…).

Examples

Mike and Bri graduated from UWEC, my alma mater.

My mom, a talented woman, recorded a lullaby CD. 

The author Victor Hugo was born in France.

My sister, a French teacher, studied in France.

Do you know much about phrases? Phrases are groups of words, without both a subject and a verb, that come together to act as one part of speech. 

Esther, my sister with dark hair, sang a song.

The appositive is the single word that is doing the renaming (sister). 

The phrase is that single word plus all of the words that are modifying it (my sister with dark hair).

There are two types of appositives (nonessential and essential), and it's important to know the difference because they're usually punctuated differently.

Nonessential - Use Commas

Most are nonessential. (These are also called nonrestrictive.) That means that they're not an essential part of the sentence, and sentences would be clear without them. Set these apart from the sentence with commas. 

Note that some publications don't add commas to these if they are simply a name. 

People who always add commas to nonessential appositives would insist on using commas in that example since I only have one husband. :) However, some publications ignore using commas in this situation. 

Essential - Don't Use Commas

Some are essential to the meaning of the sentence. (These are also called restrictive.) If these weren't in the sentence, the meaning of the sentence would be unclear. 

Do you see how we need those in order to understand the meaning of those sentences? Without them, we wouldn't know which movie or author the sentence was referring to.

Intensive pronouns are used to emphasize another noun or pronoun. We can also call these emphatic appositives. Never use commas with these. 

To diagram these, put them in parentheses after the noun that they're renaming. 

Add any words that modify it on slanted lines just like other modifiers.