<p>Ok so I've got this question in an old kaplan book from an English portion
It goes something like this
For six years Ruth {Reichl the restaurant critic for the New York Times,} used aliases and costumes...
The brackets represent the underline
Answer Choices are:
F. No Change
G. Reichl, the restaurant critic, for The New York Times,
H. Reichl, the restaurant critic for The New York Times,
J. Reichl the restaurant critic for The New York Times</p>
<p>So I thought it was J because I was under the assumption that since we have no clue who Reichl is without a description the phrase "the restaurant critic for the NY times" is an essential appositive and should not be set off with commas... but the answer is H?
Am I getting comma rules wrong here? I don't understand why we need commas for this appositive</p>
<p>Thanks guys!</p>
<p>It’s H. The phrase “the restaurant critic for the New York Times” is an appositive, and you need to separate it with commas.</p>
<p>But don’t you leave commas off an essential appositive?</p>
<p>Oh! don’t think ‘essential’. </p>
<p>when it is said that essential appositives don’t need commas, people often have no sense of what ‘essential’ really is. the appositive “the restaurant critic for NYT” is not really important in this sentence. </p>
<p>more specifically, it doesn’t ‘restrict’ the subject.</p>
<p>think of it like this: if the subject is “Ruth Reichl”, the appositive “the restaurant critic for NYT” just gives us some wonderful, but still extra, information about Ruth.</p>
<p>however: if the subject were to be “the restaurant critic”, then the appositive “Ruth Reichl” would most certainly restrict the subject. thus not needing commas.</p>
<p>Because without Ruth Reichl the article would make no sense… but since restaurant critic would be the subject then Ruth would be restrictive?</p>
<p>H is the correct choice because “the restaurant critic of NYT” is not needed for the readers to understand who Ruth Reichl is. It’s extra information, therefore, non-essential. Nonessential clauses are set off by commas in a sentence.</p>