The delineation of people into essential versus non-essential categories – it sounds a bit like something out of a John Hughes flick, doesn’t it? But I’m not talking social strata. I’m talking commas. Take that, Claire Standish.
Have you ever wondered why sometimes writers surround appositives with commas and sometimes they don’t? Let me rephrase that. Have you ever started reading a blog and then come across the word “appositives” and then debated whether you should keep reading because you a) didn’t know what it meant and/or b) started feeling a grammar-induced yawn coming on?
Stay with me. This is a helpful one.
First things first, an “appositive” is a noun placed next to another noun for the sake of identification. Oftentimes, these are names: Joe, my neighbor; Hank, the restaurant owner; Sally, an organic chicken farmer; etc. Whether these names are surrounded by commas – as they were in each of my cases here – is decided by whether that name is “essential” to the sentence as a whole. In other words, if you took out the appositive, would the sentence still make sense? If so, it belongs in commas. If not, keep it out.
Example 1:
Early on in The Breakfast Club, the princess, Claire Standish, says she wouldn’t talk to any of her fellow detention-mates in school on Monday because they weren’t on her social level. (Note, you could remove the appositive – “Claire Standish” – and no meaning would really be lost here. A princess is a princess.)
Example 2:
Director John Hughes released The Breakfast Club in 1985. (Note, if you took out the appositive – “John Hughes” – the sentence would be a bit confusing. In this case, the appositive is essential.)
But then again, when isn’t John Hughes essential? Just me? I don’t think so.
I hope this helps!