What are appositives?
They are nouns or noun phrases, usually with commas before and after, that describe the noun they follow. Their strengths are their simplicity, both for the reader and writer, and their ability to condense information.
Those scales, the old ones, will be replaced soon.
Despite their ease of use, many writers do not use them.
Types of appositive
They can be short or long, even making up the majority of a sentence.
- Elizabeth, my daughter, is applying to musical college.
- Elizabeth, my daughter who has loved to sing and play the piano since she was 4 and is now calling me, is applying to musical college.
They can be proper names, in which case they may not take commas.
My boss Peter is a keen gardener.
They can be at different places in the sentence for different effects, e.g., describing subject, direct object or indirect object:
Jackie, the newest Postdoc in our lab, lent her lecture notes, the ones on Physics, to Jane, the youngest person in our Lab.
The above example shows how appositives can form sentences that are information-dense at the same time as being simple to understand.
Practising Appositives
To practice appositives, try writing ones with the following characteristics:
- A 1 or 2 word appositive
- A long appositive (as long as you can)
- An appositive describing the subject
- An appositive describing an object
Summary
The use of appositives can improve academic writing through making it less wordy and more information-dense. If you are aware of appositives and practice them, you can improve your technical writing. However, if you need more specific help with a particular text, please consider my technical editing service.