Appositive sentences?

An appositive is a word or group of words that identifies or renames another word in a sentence. Appositive constructions offer concise ways of describing or defining a person, place, or thing.

Step 1: Place the appositive next to the subject that it refers to, such as in the following sentence: The knight, Sir Arthur Black, visited the castle. The words “Sir Arthur Black” clarify who the knight is.

Step 2: Put the appositive between commas to set it off from the subject of the sentence. When you speak this sentence, you would pause after the word “knight” and again after the word “Black.”

Step 3: Notice that you can remove the appositive from the sentence and it will still make sense. For example, you could say “The knight visited the castle.” This sentence is correct but more general because we don’t know who the knight is.

Step 4: Add an appositive to the end of the sentence after the subject such as in the following example: The man went to Rome, a city in Europe. The sentence can stand alone without the words “in Europe” but these words clarify the sentence by telling us where Rome is located.

Step 5: Put a comma before the appositive to set it off from the rest of the sentence. Pause before the comma when speaking the sentence as in the sentence above: The man went to Rome, a city in Europe.

Step 6: Recognize that the appositive cannot stand alone. It needs the main clause to make sense.

Step 7: Use appositives with modifiers to make the sentence more interesting. For example, you can say, “The dog, a large black Rottweiler, ran down the street.” This sentence includes the modifiers “large” and “black” to further clarify the type of dog that ran down the street.

Step 8: Add an appositive to the beginning of a sentence and set it off by a comma as in the following example: A country in Europe, France uses the Euro for currency. Notice again that the sentence can stand alone without the appositive.