Appositive Thinking

I have become, I'm afraid, a grammar nerd. (This from someone who didn't even like English classes in high school and college.) I confess that I don't always use correct grammar, especially in speaking, but for some reason I find it fascinating, along with punctuation/spelling/capitalization/etc. To say all that another way, I regularly and happily break a number of grammar rules in my fiction writing, but I also like knowing the rules.

For that reason, I was pleased a few weeks ago to hear about a new book called Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian, by Ellen Jovin. It's a fairly long account of her travels across the country to talk with regular people in the wild about the subject of grammar and word usage. She and her husband just went around setting up a camera and a folding table (what she calls the Grammar Table) on city streets and chatting with passersby about our crazy language. The book sounded just "different" enough that I immediately ordered it, and I've read about three fourths of it so far. It's not the best resource about grammar and style that I own, but it's good and streamlined and funny, so it occurred to me to use some things from it here at SleuthSayers. 

The chapter that triggered the idea was on the subject of appositives. That was interesting to me because (1) appositives aren't something I usually think about and (2) appositives are often misused, and misused in writing rather than in speaking. In fact, I suspect that the word appositive is one of those grammar terms. like gerund, participle, etc., that very few of us remember from our school years, and even those of us who do remember it probably don't remember what it means.

So--I'm glad you asked--an appositive is a noun or phrase placed beside another noun or phrase that either explains or identifies it. Example: Joe Smith, an old friend from college, met me for lunch today. The phrase "an old friend from college" is an appositive, and renames the noun beside it (Joe Smith).

In case you're interested, that one is an unrestricted or nonessential appositive, which means it can be taken out of the sentence and the sentence will still make sense: Joe Smith met me for lunch today. "An old friend from college" is there only to add extra, bonus information. And by the way, unrestricted appositives are set off by commas.

A restricted, or essential, appositive is necessary to the sentence. It provides non-optional information, and if it's removed, it changes the meaning of the sentence. Example: My friend John is out of town this week. If you take "John" out of the sentence, the reader won't know which of your friends is out of town. (Unless you have only one friend.) Restricted appositives are not framed by commas.

You can probably see how appositives can be misused.

My brother, Ed, is in jail. This is wrong if you have more than one brother.

The former Texas Ranger, Gus McCrea, is one of the most popular characters in fiction. The commas should be removed, here, because the name is essential to the meaning of the sentence. 

Last night I watched the movie, The Godfather. This is wrong because it implies that there is only one movie, and it's The Godfather. The comma should be removed. 

Something that wasn't mentioned specifically in that chapter of the book, but that drives me crazy, is seeing sentences like the following:

Writer, Jane Doe will be the speaker at tomorrow's lunch.

That kind of mistake (two commas would be wrong; one is even worse) shows up occasionally in announcements, newsletters, blogs, articles, and so forth, and it's especially unfortunate when it happens in an otherwise reasonable author bio: Kansas resident, Jeckyl Juberkanesta is an aspiring writer of mystery/suspense . . . The fix, of course, is to remove the comma.

I must restate here that Rebel with a Clause isn't just a reference book, it's an entertaining look at people on the street and their takes on grammar in our increasingly nonliterary world. Ellen Jovin covers everything from regionalisms to apostrophes to cusswords to the Oxford Comma, and it's fun to read.

I was going to go into some controversial grammar topics, like who/whom, em-dash/en-dash/hyphen, text-speech, etc. especially since my latest sermon on semicolon use was in October 2020 (I think writers should all have a semicolonoscopy every five years), but then I figured I should maybe leave well enough alone. 

Meanwhile, what do you think, about appositives? Or should I ask, Have you ever thought about them at all? Do you wish you weren't thinking of them now?

Whatever the case, keep writing! I'll be back in two weeks.