An appositive is a noun that tells about a noun.
Here are some examples of appositives written by students:

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

Josh Billings

Sentence without an appositive:

The old Hillbilly came down from his cabin in West Virginia.

Sentence without an appositive:

The great white shark rose to the surface, looking for the swimmers. 

Sentence without an appositive:

The young girl scribbled furiously in the library's carol. 

I glanced at my clock, digits glowing florescent blue in the inky darkness of my room.   

                                                             Jenn Coppolo


The lawyer's name was Marvin Kramer, a fourth-generation Mississippi Jew.

Gresham The Chamber

The mummy was moving.  The mummy's right arm was outstretched, the torn wrappings hanging from it, as the being stepped out of its gilded box!  The scream froze in her throat.  The thing was coming towards her---towards Henry, who stood with his back to it-- moving with a weak, shuffling gait, that arm outstretched before it, the dust rising from the rotting linen that covered it, a great smell of dust and decay filling the room.                   

Anne Rice The Mummy

The old Hillbilly, a bumbler named Jethro, came down from his cabin in West Virginia.
The old Hillbilly, a toothless, ancient wreck, came down from his cabin in West Virginia.
The old Hillbilly came down from his cabin in West Virginia, a decrepit and vermin-infested shack.

The great white shark , a malicious carnivore, rose to the surface, looking for the swimmers. 
The great white shark , a malevolent, prehistoric creature, rose to the surface, looking for the swimmers. 
The great white shark rose to the surface, looking for the swimmers, the monster's helpless lunch. 

The young girl, a diligent adolescent genius, scribbled furiously in the library's carol. 
The young girl, a college freshman in danger of failing, scribbled furiously in the library's carol. 
The young girl scribbled furiously in the library's carol, an island of silence in a world of noise and distraction. 

Here are some examples from professional writers:
My mother was telling me to fight, a thing she had never done before.

Richard Wright Black Boy (105)

And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men came and took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

Kurt Vonnegut "Harrison Bergeron" (133)

She was bossy and proud, a dreadful sag of skin and bones, and she was a devilish hard worker. 

Dorothy M. Johnson  "A Man Called Horse" (167)

…he was not trusted to hunt with the men, the providers.

Dorothy M. Johnson "A Man Called Horse" (167)

He was ashamed of his mother, the washerwoman, and never came to see her.

Isaac Bashevis Singer "The Washerwoman" (189)


In the Hall of Audience his father awaited him: a fierce grey-haired man crowned with iron. 

Ursula Le Guin "The Darkness Box  (54)

His wife, a wispy little thing twenty years younger than he, went through six miscarriages before Jamie was born.                      Nicolas Sparks A Walk to Remember

Two large shaggy dogs, half greyhound, half mastiff, stood ready to rush upon the traveler as soon as the door should be opened.           Sir Walter Scott Ivanhoe

Assignment 1:

As an introduction to appositives, complete
Practice 1: Unscrambling &
Practice 2: Imitating 



Killgallon, Don.  Sentence
    Composing for High School. 
    Boynton/Cook Publishers,
    Heinemann.  Portsmouth,
    NH, 1998.

Assignment 2:

To understand how using appositives can help prevent a writer from composing a series of short, choppy sentences, complete practice 3: Sentence Combining.


Killgallon, Don.  Sentence
    Composing for High School. 
    Boynton/Cook Publishers,
    Heinemann.  Portsmouth,
    NH, 1998.

Assignment 3:

Find appositives in a novel, photocopy the page(s) and highlight the phrases.   

Assignment 4:
Take the quiz.