An appositive is a noun that renames another noun that’s right next to it. The two nouns are in apposition ( NOT opposition ) to each other.
Example A: Mary Bailor, my instructor, has been teaching English for over forty years. Example B: The last cookie, a gingerbread man with one leg, was left on the plate after the party.
In Example A, the noun Mary Bailor is renamed by another noun, instructor. Appositives may involve more than simple nouns, however. Note the modification added to the noun cookie: a gingerbread man with one leg. Note the modification added to the appositive in the following example, where noun phrases are used:
Example C: The ability to grade coins, a skill requiring experience as well as knowledge, cannot be learned overnight from a textbook.
Here, the ability to grade coins is a noun phrase, and a skill requiring experience as well as knowledge is another noun phrase, standing in apposition to the first one.
The use of appositives is commonly taught as a renaming of the subject, as in the examples above. In such cases, the subject of the sentence is named, the sentence is interrupted by the appositive, and then the sentence continues with the verb and the other elements. The typical set-off is achieved with commas. However, the appositive is much more flexible than that. Instead of following the subject the appositive can be placed in front of the subject noun it modifies.
Example D: A traditional feast of six-foot sandwiches and free beer, the picnic was always well attended.
In fact, not just a noun used as a subject, but any noun can take an appositive for example, an appositive can be placed after a noun at the end of a sentence.
Example E: The pharmaceutical company’s work on the virus code was interrupted by an unexpected event, a flu epidemic.
In this example, a dash, parentheses, or a colon could have been used to set off the appositive, depending on the effect the writer wanted to achieve. Notice also
