Appositives

hello grammarians and hello Paige hi David so today we're gonna be talking about the appositive which is just a monster of a word right and I can tell you that from my limited study of Latin write it comes from ad Paz eto which is like putting putting on which doesn't really necessarily help what is this thing like what is what is this device how do we use it and what does it have to do with commas that is a great question so the definition itself is also kind of confusing but it'll make a lot of sense when we see some examples okay my older sister Griselda is going to college in the fall okay so in A+ what is the definition of an A+ n so it is a noun phrase that clarifies or redefines its antecedent and an antecedent is just something that comes before so what we're doing here with Griselda is we are redefining or clarifying who my older sister is and so in order to do that we're putting it between these commas like so voop voop and we're just saying it again my older sister Griselda is going to college in the fall right but it doesn't always have to be in the middle like this right that's true it can be say at the end so they stopped selling my favorite snack the cookie cat I'm so sorry I know it's so sad so we've got we've got this a position then at the end of the sentence so my favorite snack is being redefined or clarified by cookie cat yeah or rather cookie cat is clarifying or redefining my redefining my favorite snack right I could just say they stopped selling my favorite snack and that would just that could just be in some sentence remotely they stopped selling my my favorite snack my older sister is going to college in the fall like this stuff isn't essential to the understanding of the sentence right but if you you know don't know what my favorite snack is then it's kind of helpful to say or it's helpful for me to say the cookie cat so you can use them as in the first sentence my older sister comma Griselda comma is going to college in the fall or you can use it as in the second sentence they stopped selling my favorite snack comma the cookie cat period right you know you don't need another comment right at the end let's change that back into a comma so this is just another illustration of the separating power of the comma because we're using it to set off this explanatory clarifying element in the middle or at the end of these sentences yeah man it seems like commas can do like anything yeah it's pretty incredible you know what else can do anything what the viewer you the viewer you can learn anything that's the appositive and how it relates to commas David out page out