Appositives: What They Are and How to Punctuate Them
What is an appositive? We define apposition, work through clear examples, explain when to use commas, and show how appositives connect to the Oxford comma.
An appositive is a noun or pronoun placed next to another noun or pronoun to identify, clarify, or explain it. Apposition — the grammatical construction that contains an appositive — takes its name from the Latin ad (“near”) and positio (“placement”).
Here are a few examples. In each, the noun or pronoun is shown in bold and the appositive in italics.
Example 1: Your sister Cathy is clever.
Example 2: My friend’s motorbike, a green Honda, accelerates very quickly.
Example 3: You’re better than anyone, anyone I’ve met before.
In Example 1, we have a noun (“sister”) and an appositive (“Cathy”) that identifies it.
In Example 2, there is a modified noun (“friend’s motorbike”) with an appositive (“a green Honda”) that adds information about it. Note that both the noun and the appositive can take modifiers.
In Example 3, we again have a noun (“anyone”), with an appositive used to strengthen the phrase.
Appositives don’t always follow the words they identify, clarify, or explain. As Examples 4 and 5 show, they can also come first.
Example 4: Famous for conquering Persia, Alexander the Great is shrouded in myth and legend.
Example 5: An attractive Labrador, Molly is my favourite dog.
Punctuating an Appositive
When the information in an appositive is essential to the meaning of a sentence, leave it alone — there is no need to set it off with commas. For example:
Example 6: The Founding Father Alexander Hamilton wrote many impressive works.
Here the appositive (“Alexander Hamilton”) is essential: remove it and the sentence becomes unclear, because we no longer know which Founding Father is meant. The commas are therefore unnecessary.
Example 7: Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father, wrote many impressive works.
In Example 7, the appositive is not essential to the meaning, so we set it off with commas. Drop the appositive and we still have a complete sentence: “Alexander Hamilton wrote many impressive works.” Because the clarifying information is non-essential, commas are appropriate.
Example 8: Alexander Hamilton the unfaithful husband was quite different from Alexander Hamilton the Founding Father.
Finally, the two appositives in Example 8 are essential to the meaning, so we omit the commas. Without them, the sentence would read, “Alexander Hamilton was quite different from Alexander Hamilton.” The appositives are what tell us which attributes of Hamilton are being compared, so commas are not needed.
Appositives and the Oxford Comma
In our companion article on the Oxford comma, we noted that some writers avoid the serial comma because, in special cases, it is easy to mistake a list item for an appositive. To see why, consider these examples:
Example 9: I had lunch with my father, Barack Obama, and the Prime Minister of Switzerland.
Example 10: I had lunch with my father, Barack Obama, and the Prime Minister of Switzerland.
Examples 9 and 10 are exactly the same sentence, yet each can be read with a different meaning.
Read the comma after “Obama” in Example 9 as an Oxford comma, and the sentence is simply a list: the writer had lunch with three people — their father, Barack Obama, and the Prime Minister of Switzerland.
Read the same sentence as containing an appositive, however — as in Example 10 — and the writer appears to have had lunch with only two people: their father (who is also Barack Obama) and the Prime Minister of Switzerland.
This highlights a genuine weakness of the Oxford comma, but it is not as serious as it sounds. Many writers use the Oxford comma all the time, trusting that — in virtually every case — context will tell the reader whether an appositive is intended.