1. OUR GOAL is to look for new and improved ways to achieve more sentence variety.
Each sentence composing lesson will introduce you to a new phrase that will enable you to experiment with combining and expanding sentences.
Each new lesson will reinforce correct punctuation as well.

2. The APPOSITIVE PHRASE
Definition:
An appositive renames a noun or pronoun.
An appositive phrase is a group of words that renames or identifies an adjacent noun or pronoun.
Tips: Most, but not all appositive phrases, begin with “a”, “an”, or “the”.

3. Examples
Sentence without an appositive:
Matilda was crying in her room.
Sentence with an appositive.
Matilda, the youngest, was crying in her room.
Sentence with an appositive phrase:
Matilda, the youngest child in the family, was crying in her room.

4. His car stood in the driveway.
Let’s look at a basic sentence:
His car stood in the driveway.
As a reader, I am curious about the car.
How can the author satisfy that curiosity?

5. *Notice how the writer creates drama by
By adding an appositive phrase, the writer gives the reader a clearer way to identify the car.
His car, a perfectly maintained 1960 Thunderbird, stood in the driveway.
*Notice how the writer creates drama by
interrupting the subject and the verb.
* Notice how the appositive phrase is wrapped
in commas.

6. * Notice how both appositive phrases are wrapped
The writer can even add more than one appositive phrase to identify the car.
His car, a perfectly maintained 1960 Thunderbird, his pride and joy, stood in the driveway.
*Notice how the writer gives even more information by adding the second appositive phrase.
* Notice how both appositive phrases are wrapped
in commas.

7. As a subject-Verb Split:
Remember: Each new phrase can be added to a sentence in one of three ways:
As a sentence opener:
One of eleven brothers and sisters, Harriet was a moody, willful child.
As a subject-Verb Split:
His car, a perfectly maintained 1960 Thunderbird that was his pride and joy, stood in the driveway.
As a sentence Closer:
Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five.