Funny story. I didn’t learn what an appositive was until I had to teach it, year after year, to classrooms full of 7^th and 8^th graders.

I just used an appositive in the above sentence. Can you spot it?

The answer: year after year (set off by commas)

I like grammar, so I thought I’d give a mini lesson on appositives, because why not?

An appositive is a noun, pronoun, or noun with modifiers directly next to another noun or pronoun, which gives more information.

It’s easiest to understand by seeing.

Let’s take the above sentence first:

I didn’t learn what an appositive was until I had to teach it, year after year, to classrooms full of 7^th and 8^th graders.

The noun the phrase ‘year after year’ is modifying is ‘it’ (referring to an appositive).

Here are some other examples. The noun is bold-faced; the appositive is italicized.

• My sister Julie won the spelling bee!

• The teacher, a friendly woman in her fifties, loves to teach math.

• My dogs, Bean, Dobby, and Pippin, light up my life.

The appositive can also come before the noun:

• A plant-lover, Shannon has a green thumb.

• A fascinating place to visit, the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum is on the Outer Banks.

And there you have it—appositives! In case you were wondering…

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