Styelacademy #1

I use appositives in abundance in my writing. In fact, my writing is so full of appositives

my sentences last forever, which is not a good thing. When writing essays, I find that I

constantly use appositives to define things that I am talking about, and give examples of

what I think something means. This both adds and detracts from clarity. It makes it very

clear what I mean to express, but muffles my writing because appositives detracts from

the central purpose the sentence is trying to convey-essentially shrouding an intent and

idea in definitions and examples. See? I just created a run on sentence using

appositives. I end up adding so much information that I feel is imperative to

understanding what I am trying to convey, that my meaning gets lost in a sea of words.

What I hope to gain from this video is how to create appositives to help make a

sentence more impactful and less distracting. It would also be beneficial for me to learn

how to make my appositives to flow better.

From the video I learned that appositives have four main purposes: to identify or

rename, to explain or give examples of previously given sentences, to define, and to

summarize. Definitions and appositives typically occur after the noun that they are

describing. Appositives can be surrounded by either commas or dashes. Dashes help

add drama to the sentence, drawing attention to the information between the dashes. I

hope to continue using appositives in my writing, but I feel that I would benefit by using

fewer for the sake of clarity. A rule that I have been trying to implement is that my thesis

statements should never be longer than fifteen words long. Afterwards, however, I will

permit myself more words per sentence.



Appostives

Exercises

Find and underline the two appositives in the following sentence and then categorize them.


It is an astonishing thought that every last backdrop and foreprop of our lives, the sweet 

air we breathe, the cool water we drink, the speed bumps we bump over, all consist

of discrete, hollow particles, trillions upon quintillions of vacuum-filled atoms that 

will get close to each other, but never too close.

Propose: to give examples and thus define, describe

- Natalie Angier, The Canon, pp. 91


Combine all the sentences to make one sentence and to create an appositive.

1. Drew Gilpin Faust recently testified before the United States Congress to encourage the

government to fund more science research. Faust is a historian and the first woman to

serve as president of Harvard University.

Drew Gilpin Faust, a history and the first woman to serve as president of Harvard

Universe, testified before the United State Congress to encourage the government to fund

more science research.

2. The word cow contains a diphthong. A diphthong is a vowel sound that kind of glides

from one vowel sound to another.

The word cow contains a diphthong, a vowel sound that kind of glides from one

vowel sound to another.

3. Saltair was once called the Coney Island of the West. Saltair was built in 1893. It was

built on the southern shore of the Great Sale Lake in Utah. Saltair was built by the Los

Angeles and Sale Lake Railroad Company. Saltair was designed by Richard Kletting.

Richard Kletting was a Utah architect of German descent.

Saltair, once called the Coney Island of the West, was built in 1983 on the southern shore of the

Great Sale Lake in Utah by the Los Angeles and Sale Lake Railroad Company, designed by

Richard Kletting, a Utah architect of German descent.