Random House Guide to Good Writing by Mitchell Ivers

Author:Mitchell Ivers [Ivers, Mitchell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77520-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Appositives

Words and phrases, like clauses, can be restrictive or nonrestrictive. Appositives are nouns or phrases that rephrase or identify a neighboring noun. They can be restrictive or nonrestrictive. As with clauses, commas are used with the nonrestrictive appositives; no commas are used with restrictive ones.

Thus, if you are speaking about Elizabeth Taylor, you might say:

• Her husband Richard Burton was a great actor.

—without a comma. Elizabeth Taylor had several husbands; therefore the appositive (“Richard Burton”) is restrictive. The sentence needs it. Delete the restrictive appositive (“Her husband was a great actor”), and you might be calling Mike Todd or Eddie Fisher a great actor.

However, if you are speaking about the wife of the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, the appositive would not be restrictive:

• Her husband, Sir Richard Burton, was a great explorer.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.