Whether you’re submitting a legal brief, drafting a contract, or even just composing an email, it’s the small details that make your writing stand out professionally. Appositive phrases are a quirk of English grammar that can be deceptively tricky—but using them correctly will keep your writing noticeably polished to the eyes of clients and colleagues alike.

Appositives in Action

Think of an appositive phrase as an aside within a sentence that defines or gives additional information about a noun. Here are some examples of sentences containing appositives (bolded):

The 32^nd president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was elected to office four times.

American figure skater Alysa Liu won the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

A lifelong learner, my father read fifty books last year.

My cousin Joseph recently graduated from law school.

These are common constructions we encounter every day when reading and writing, but as you can see from the examples above, the use of punctuation can vary. It’s easy to misplace a comma and write a sentence that isn’t quite right. Here are the rules of using appositives clearly and correctly.

Non-essential appositives

In the first example sentence, the appositive phrase (“Franklin D. Roosevelt”) is set off by commas. This is because it is a non-essential appositive. If we removed the name of the president, the sentence would still make sense, though it would be a bit less precise.

The 32^nd president of the United States was elected to office four times.

The same is true for the third example sentence—the appositive (“A lifelong learner”) describing the subject of the sentence (“my father”) comes at the beginning of the sentence, but it is still set off with a comma and can be removed without disrupting meaning.

My father read fifty books last year.

The easiest way to identify a non-essential appositive (and thus to determine if it needs to be set off with commas) is to ask yourself if the sentence would retain its meaning without that piece of information.

Essential Appositives

Essential appositives cannot be removed from a sentence without creating confusion. Let’s remove the appositive (the name “Alysa Liu”) from the second example sentence:

American figure skater won the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

See how that doesn’t sound quite right? “American figure skater” can’t function as the subject of the sentence by itself—we’re left asking, “Who? What figure skater?”

We could fix this by simply adding an article (“an”):

An American figure skater won the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The figure skater still isn’t named, but the sentence now reads as complete on its own. If we were to add the name of the skater back into the sentence with the article, it would become a non-essential appositive and thus need comma separation.

An American figure skater, Alysa Liu, won the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Depending on context, whether an appositive is essential or non-essential can be subjective. The fourth example sentence includes the cousin’s name (Joseph) as an essential appositive with no commas. Although “My cousin recently graduated from law school” is a complete sentence on its own, there may be contexts in which it is important to specify which cousin graduated from law school—maybe whoever you’re addressing needs to know that it was Joseph and not your other cousin, Claire. Use your best judgment in these situations.

Common Errors

One mistake that often occurs in constructions containing appositives is that writers will add a single comma in front of an essential appositive, which causes an odd pause in the middle of a complete sentence. Such an error might look like this:

Japanese baseball player, Shohei Ohtani was selected to participate in the 2026 All-Star Game.

The phrase “Japanese baseball player” is dangling at the front of the sentence here because the appositive (“Shohei Ohtani”) isn’t fully set off with commas. This sentence could be rewritten a couple different ways:

Japanese baseball player Shohei Ohtani was selected to participate in the 2026 All-Star Game.

Here, the name becomes an essential appositive telling us which Japanese baseball player is being referred to.

A Japanese baseball player, Shohei Ohtani, was selected to participate in the 2026 All-Star Game.

In this version of the sentence, the appositive is non-essential, since “A Japanese baseball player was selected to participate in the 2026 All-Star Game” is a complete (though vague) sentence on its own.

As always, one of the best ways to check and edit your own writing is to simply read things back and ask yourself if it sounds right to your ear. If you’re unsure about how to treat an appositive, try retyping the sentence without it and decide if the meaning is preserved to determine whether it is essential or non-essential.

Use Appositives Correctly to Polish Your Legal Writing

While these mistakes may not be as initially obvious as typos, an incorrectly deployed appositive can cause any sentence to veer off course. Understanding how appositives work will ensure that your writing maintains a professional tone. 

If you’re looking for more ways to polish your legal writing, make sure to check out the rest of our legal writing tips! Written by our very own Texas Bar Books editors, these tips run the gamut from how to use em dashes and oxford commas to how to avoid legalese and paraphrase correctly.