What is the difference between appositives and nonessential elements?

Question

I am honesty quite confused as I know that both add extra or not necessary information, but that is the extent of my knowledge.

Answer 1

Best example of appositives and essential and nonessential (adjective clauses) follow same rule as found in englishforeveryone.org, "8 Comma Rules."

#4 Comma Rule: to separate any word or phrase from the rest of the sentence that is not essential to the sentence meaning. This phrase usually provides extra information about the subject.

1) My brother, a 26 year old male, is watching TV.

2) The car, a 1967 mustang, is very fast.

3) My husband, on the other hand, does not like coffee.

Notice now in all your reading, nouns proceeded by commas containing adjective descriptors. Also recommend printing out the comma rules.

Best.

Miriam Burch

Answer 2

Well yes, nonessential elements are definitely always nonessential...but I feel like we're getting caught up in the semantics of these words and not really identifying the clear difference. For the sake of this answer, let's just use the phrase 'extra information' instead of 'nonessental elements.'

So, we have a sentence, with a subject (person or thing) and a verb (action). So someone is doing something. Example: The teacher yelled at the students. Now there are two types of 'extra information' that can be added here: extra information about the teacher (the subject or noun), or extra information about other stuff. So basically, an appositive always gives that 'extra information' about a noun, or the subject of the sentence.

Example of appositive: The teacher, WHO HATED HER JOB, yelled at the students. The core of the sentence is still just "The teacher yelled" but the extra information in between the commas describes that teacher. Appositive.

If, on the other hand, that extra information is not related to that understandably annoyed and jaded teacher, then it's just plain extra, or, yes, nonessential.

Example: The teacher, while the two boys held hands in the corner, yelled at the students.

See? Just extra information. Essential? No. Entertaining? Absolutely. But it has nothing to do with the teacher, and everything to do with the boys. Teacher: Appositive. Boys: Nonessential.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

That is basically it. One other thing to mention is that some appositives can be essential, but nonessential elements are always nonessential by default.